Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Progress

Last night Thea slept **the entire night** in her own little bed. 
I could cry. 
She maybe slept 2 or 3 nights all the way through in her crib so this is a pretty big deal! 


 About a week or so ago I set up Henry's old toddler bed in his room so we could start transitioning Thea to a bed and free up the crib for the baby. She was excited about the bed but I wasn't sure how it'd go at night. We did the same night time routine and once she was asleep in my arms from rocking we'd go put her in the bed and usually after 5 minutes or so of staying with her and getting her back into a good sleep we could take off.
She'd stay in there until anywhere from 11-2 then wake up and come into our room and bed. When she slept in the crib it was usually no later than midnight so we felt like things were good.

 Then we had the time change...
Sunday night I couldn't get her to sleep until 9pm and I had started trying around 7. Same story Monday night and I started thinking maybe she just wasn't ready and we should go back to the crib for nighttime as well as nap. The fact she slept longer in the bed though made me think I should at least keep trying until the time change wore off and I'm glad I did because even though it took about an hour last night to get her to sleep and it wasn't until 8:30, she slept until 7:15 this morning by herself! Usually she is up no later than 6:15. She did wake up once around 2am but didn't get out of her bed so I went in, hugged her, rubbed her back for a minute, she went back to sleep, and so did I! It was amazing.

I'd say we are making progress and hopefully in a few weeks we'll have bedtime in the bed down and maybe we can start to work on naps in the bed too. Any suggestions for nap transition out of the crib? Henry was almost a year older when we moved him so it was a lot easier to explain some of the things to him.

The other thing I've been working on with Thea is having her hair done. Everyone told me when I had a girl that if I would start from day 1 with having her hair done and never stop, they'd just get use to it and be fine with it-lies! About 3 months ago (maybe more) she began to rebel every time she saw a comb come out and what can I say, I decided it wasn't worth it most of the time. But now that her hair is growing out she looks like she has a mullet when it's just down so I wanted to be able to do it again. It's been a pretty big scream show and I've had to think of different things to entertain her (bandaids in the little metal boxes seems to work well...) but probably 9 of the last 10 days I have managed to get her hair done. She's messy anyway so it's nice having it out of her face and line of food intake or whatever else she gets her hands on and then into her hair.





So again, not perfect, it rarely lasts until late afternoon, but progress!

Now I need to work on doing little activities at home for her and getting out to do things just for her like the park or library; it's just so easy with the second to think, well she gets play time with Henry and outside time in the yard so I don't need any extra outings or things to plan. I think I probably don't need to as much as I did with Henry but I think I should take her to something for her at least once or twice a week right? What do you guys do when you just have littles at home during school that's just for them? 
Thanks!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Introducing Groucho!

Late, late Saturday night we brought home the newest member of the family, Groucho Simonds! 



Henry said the front of the car reminded him of a giant mustache, hence the name. 

We went to the lot around 7pm mostly to find out what they had, what our options were etc. We had been saving for a van almost since Johann started working and especially since we knew we were having a third kid. We had test driven some vans earlier and knew we wanted a Toyota Sienna just not what year or type etc. and we knew we needed one before June.  

When we met with the salesman we explained we were first time buyers, still less than two years out of school and that we were thinking of getting a certified preowned. He was nice but didn't seem too excited with us until after he ran the credit check and then out came the floor manager and finance guy etc. Well, long story short, after 4 plus hours (ie 11:30pm at night) we had everything signed at we left the lot with our 2014 Sienna SE. All the preowned ones they had were only maybe 3000 less and had a fair amount of miles so we decided to just go with a new one. We got 60 months with 0% interest so we're pretty happy about that. 



As we cleaned out our Malibu I was mostly thinking how cold and tired I was and then Johann says, "Just think, this is the car we took for our first date, when we were married, brought both our kids home in-it has a lot of memories." I'm not terribly sentimental but I lost it and cried like a baby in the middle of the car lot. I think a combination of tired, cold, hungry and a bit of sentimentality did it. I felt like I was betraying this car that had done so much for us but was on it's last leg and I was sending it off, probably to a chop shop.

I'm still a little sad we had to say goodbye to it, but I do feel much less worried about breaking down etc with the van, but I still don't feel like it is *our* car.  I'm sure the kids will do their best to mess it up and make it homey sooner than I want, though. The kids, especially Henry, were really excited on Sunday morning and Henry even made his primary teacher go out and see it after church. He loves to tell everyone, "everything is automatic!" 

Maybe it's stupid to have a whole post for a van but it's our first big purchase together as a married couple which I feel merits one. So goodbye to the malibu, we'll keep the great 7 years of memories and hello to a whole new set of memories to be made while using this van!