Smiling Through the Rain

Overall, this was a great year for us. We welcomed our beautiful son who quickly terrified us with a case of meningitis and watched our gorgeous daughter become a funny, independent 2-year-old with a love of all animals and a hatred for mornings. I gained 35 pounds with my giant fetus. Then I lost 33 pounds. I think the remaining 2 is in the milk makers. I have spent about 1000 hours nursing over the past 5 months. Luckily I haven't had to pump much this time because he eats ALOT. We changed about 15 diapers a day between 2 kids, so my math says that in 2012 we changed 1.3 million. Give or take a few. :). You're welcome, Pampers. We just conquered our 2nd year as owners of the vet clinic. It was another successful year! We went to Vegas for Aaron's vet conference, on a cruise to the Caribbean, and to the Dominican Republic for vacation. Learned that Paisley is a great traveler, Also figured out that traveling for 12 hrs while 7 months pregnant is e

Having two kids is drastically different than one. My time is now split into trying to keep two little people happy and fed and bathed. I have two people fighting for my attention and needing their mama. Most of the time it goes fine. Paisley adores Graham as if he belongs to her and loves to help me change him, dress him and love on him. Her jealousy is really nonexistent. In fact, I feel like we have a best case scenario as far as adding a sibling goes. When it gets tricky is when they both have a need for mommy and I have to choose. You know the moments. One has a poop explosion all over the living room while the other decides to fall and hurt themselves. Or when one is super tired and needs to be rocked while the other is hungry. Or even which one to load into the car first when it's freaky butt cold outside. Whose needs are more important? How do you decide? Every day I lay down at night and think about what I could have done different and hope that my two bab

Yay!!! I guess blogger let me post pictures again for my Christmas present!!!

Every year this happens and every year I forget that it does. The holidays start getting closer and I literally lose my mind. As a child, I loved Christmas. And since I got married, that all changed. I feel like the whole event is crammed pack with obligations to be so many places that we are exhausted and overstuffed and cranky by the end. I am so jealous of the one house families who can relax in one place and even nap after eating. We put on our track shoes Christmas Eve and race through the holiday like Jackie Joyner Kersey. Not sure on spelling, but you get the point... We eat all we can muster to avoid hurt feelings and conjure up as much bonding time as possible in a short period. I know what you're thinking. Cut back. Don't do as much. But it just isn't possible to leave these houses out. We've already left everything out that we possibly can. And don't even get me started on how much I want the decorations down, the presents opened and put

Oh, that would be me. Graham chose to kick off our day by showering me with urine this morning while I was trying to figure out which diaper was his and which was his sisters. (Size 3 looks just like size 5 in the morning). At first it just hit my jeans but my reaction time is ridiculously slow when I first wake up so he also got my shirt and the couch. This kid's bladder seems to have an amazingly large capacity considering how wet everything was. You know you've really hit a low point in your life when you don't even consider changing clothes and just pat yourself off with a wipe. At least the kid wasn't in his clean clothes yet.

Once upon a time, there was this infertile girl who started this blog in order to reach out to others who were in the same position as her. She hoped to find girls that would understand what she was going through. What she learned was that this community would oftentimes be her saving grace. They would encourage her when she was worried, celebrate with her when she was happy and mourn with her when times went bad. These girls she'd never meet in real life were going to become some of her best friends. The number of followers grew and grew and she loved reading the comments that people left. Every now and then she would even meet someone in person who was a follower. It was such a huge compliment to realize that people actually liked the crap she was writing. But then the infertile girl did the unthinkable. She got pregnant. And the blog entered new territory. Happiness. Success. But she felt sad because she couldn't bring all of her blog friends along for the ri

It's official. Graham has been coerced by his big sister to stop being a good sleeper. I don't know how she convinced him or why she even thinks no sleep is a good idea. But I know she's to blame here. Let's recap sleep on our house. Pre-Paisley: lots of sleep whenever we felt like it. The only thing that would risk waking me in the middle of the night was a full bladder. I could sleep 10 hours at night and then nap for 3 the next day. The Paisley Era: from night one of her life, she decided that you can sleep when you die and she didn't plan on missing out on things. She kept me up ALL night every night. Even now, she never sleeps more than 9-10 hours at night and still doesn't want to go down. She is just now napping consistently because I insisted out if necessity for my well-being. The Graham Era: he was the sleeper I'd always dreamt about. Sleeping 4-5 hour stretches even in the hospital. He'd only wake to eat and then happily fal

Several things I forgot to mention in my previous post. The little potty chair that we originally got disgusted me. The thing looks cute and innocent until the first exposure to bodily fluids. Then I feel it should be thrown into a red biohazard bag, airtight sealed, and picked up by men wearing hazmat suits. Because your options in cleaning that sucker are pretty limited. 1.) rinse in sink. Gross. 2.) rinse in bath tub. Gross and inconvenient. 3.) dishwasher. Not possible and super gross. So, we said out with that idea and bought an Elmo potty ring that fits on the "big potty". She also has a stool that she uses to mount the big potty. Here's where a stubborn child comes into play: she has to do everything h herself. So potty time takes us 45 minutes. No kidding. Her dad and I take snacks in there and I'm thinking of mounting a TV above the toilet. She must move the stool over to the potty from the sink. Then she removes her pants and shoes co