The New Normal

We were eating dinner last night and I told Ian that tomorrow we would be back to normal again as daddy is going back to work. He politely informed me that it's not normal though because now we have Ana. We agreed that we would happily have a new normal now, and this was day one. I thought it was anyways.

My day was abruptly started at 3am when I was awakened by miss monkey pants kicking her feet in her crib. She does this when she wakes up in the morning, and just before she starts falling asleep at night. Her feet are always going, actually. Anyways, she wasn't fussing, just talking to herself mostly. I decided I wouldn't do anything unless she started to cry. She would seem like she was starting to fuss, but very briefly. By the time I would sit up she would be done and quiet down. I've found that sometimes she does this as she's falling asleep (her eyes are even closed) so I assumed she was just falling back to sleep. Well, this went on for about an hour before she actually started to cry. I picked her up and immediately knew why she was having trouble falling asleep, maybe even the reason for her waking so early. She had a diaper full (mother of the year, here I come!)! I brought her into her room and without turning on the over head light managed to clean her up and put a fresh diaper on. Well between the cold wipes and the light in the hallway, she was wide awake by the time we finished the task. I put her back in her crib and she started to cry so I picked her back up and brought her into bed with me. I had to lay her on my chest because of course monkey number one was taking up all the space between Greg and I. As soon as she noticed Ian was next to me, it was all over. I could almost see the wheels turning "Hey, that's my favorite boy! Let me touch him!!" she just wouldn't settle down. I tried to move my arm so it was in the way of her view of him but it turns out that Ian had rolled into me and his little face was directly between the bend in my elbow and my side so she could see his face and was trying to grab his nose. So I decided to take Ana into Ian's room to try and lie down in his bed. Well she has never been in Ian's room at night and she just became very freaked out by once again not knowing where she was. It was a downward spiral from there. She quickly became inconsolable so we had to go back into my room. On the way back, I noticed that Milo the wonder dog had escaped our bedroom and was in hot pursuit of that diaper I had just taken off Ana. I hissed at him to get out of there and he bolted down the stairs, to which I hissed again to get upstairs into our room. I got him corralled back in and pleaded with Greg to wake up and hold Ana while I went to make her a bottle. At this point she's been up for almost 2 hours and her stomach is undoubtedly beginning to growl. So I made her 4 ounces to hold her over and she did eventually fall asleep thankfully, and slept until a little after 7:00.

So Greg's alarm goes off at about 6:30 and I just can't open my eyes. Greg showered and got Ian up, dressed, and fed. He emptied the dishwasher and the trash, and got Ian's back pack all together (oh and apparently one of the animals vomited last night and he picked that up as well). Have I told you how much I love this man? I pulled myself out of bed at 7:00 and got into the shower myself but not before knocking the brand new roll of toilet paper into the toilet, arrgh! Anyways, I got myself ready and by this time Ana was awake and I got her up and dressed and got some cereal into her. At 7:52 (we were actually going to make the bus on time!) Ian announced that he doesn't think he has school today to which I reply, "Ian, you are going to school, nice try". He says "no, mumma really! Mrs. Schreiber told us we had next Monday off and that was last week!". So I go to the computer and wouldn't you know, he's right! Teacher workshop day today, no school. Geez, that little trip to Wal-Mart this morning just got a little more difficult!

Okay, I'm back from Wal-Mart, which is officially my first outing by myself with both kids. I think we managed okay actually! Ian says to me on the way home out of the blue, "I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to start the new normal!" I guess he's right...

Anyways, I'll leave you with some pictures I've been meaning to get up. I've been informed that there are people that have been anxiously awaiting an update from us...so sorry to keep you waiting! I had started 4 separate posts, but just haven't had the time to finish them for one reason or another. I've really wanted to post some pictures which has been part of the hold up as I hadn't figured out how to download them with the new computer set up we have. Also in my defense, every time I take a picture, it has to be converted in photo shop from the camera's raw file format to jpeg so I can use it, and that takes a while especially with the number of pictures I take! After the kids are in bed, to think about the amount of work it would take to give a decent update has just been too much to think about! So anyways, enough with the excuses, and on to the pictures...

Ana's first outside adventure. We first went out so Ian could ride his scooter and I carried Ana in the front carrier. Our neighbors came by to ask if we wanted to join them for a walk which we gladly accepted. I put Ana in the stroller and she was happy as a clam! The walk was quite humorous actually. We had five boys on bikes, finding it hard, after a long winter, to remember the "stay to the side" rule, absolute chaos! Then there was Marcia pushing an empty stroller because Emma abandoned it after exclaiming "I'm stuck, I'm stuck!" (she was strapped in the stroller) and Marcia took pity and let her get "unstuck". There was Ollie laying on the side of the road at one point screaming causing Marcia to sprint only to find he was playing with sticks, and Elizabeth who suddenly had to pee, and lastly there was Ian taking up the rear on his scooter whining "My legs are tired, I can't go any further" (yeah, this started about 15 minutes into the walk, lovely!). It was so nice to get out of the house though!!

Ian and his new bike. He finally admitted that "lightning strike" his old bike is too small for him. I think his admission was mostly because last year we took his training wheels off and he thought if he got a new bike he'd get one with training wheels. He wasn't very impressed when his new bike had only two wheels. He'll get there, he just needs some confidence! Here he is re-learning to ride without training wheels. He does fine, but is just really nervous about falling so doesn't want to ride far before throwing his legs down to stop himself.

Ana's first Easter! We invited everyone here this year because we didn't want to take Ana all over the place yet. She did okay, but did get pretty overwhelmed with all the people around. Ian had a ball finding the eggs the Easter Bunny hid, and tearing through his basket. He and daddy took turns wearing the blue grass filling.

Decorating eggs. Ian loves to dye Easter eggs. Just like with his play doh though, one color at a time is never enough. We usually end up with an assortment of purplish brown colored eggs. This year, he actually kept mostly to one color each and even took the time to stencil a couple eggs!