Going a little more crazy with every short nap!

Skip down a few paragraphs if you're not interested in reading about more mommy frustrations (I know I write about that often....but hey, it's my life right now!)!

So let's see....it's 2:54 as I'm starting to type this.  I just finished some chores and sat down at the computer about 5 minutes ago, and now I hear Drew crying.  I left his room at 2:11.  A 43-minute nap isn't my idea of a decent break (both boys woke up before 6am), so I'm hoping he will go back to sleep.  This is the kind of stuff that makes me go crazy!

I gave him Brownie (his blanky) and now he's stopped crying...for now.  He did this yesterday too and woke up in 15-minute increments until I finally got him out of his crib after a total of an hour and a half.

I know I've said this before (and we talked about it in my Bible study group today, so I know all stay-at-home moms deal with this): I love my kids, but when they wake up at 6am and go to sleep at 8pm, I need a break during that time to do my own stuff!  Grant is great with naps (usually 2-3 hours), and it would be heavenly if both of them did that every day.  When Drew happens to take longer naps (by longer I mean at least 1.5 hours), I feel so refreshed and like I actually was able to accomplish something!  Those are the only days I can blog or work on some other project.  It's just a huge adjustment having little kids and not having the time to pursue my own interests, except maybe for an hour or two per week.  It's like I'm not the same old "me" during this stage of life; I'm having to put my own interests on hold for these few years while I have itty-bitty kids.  And again, I suppose this is a normal way to feel, and in the scheme of things, this stage won't last long.  I know I'm supposed to selflessly remember that my kids are my top priority and I couldn't be doing any more important work than this, etc.  I know this, but when you're with your kids almost every waking hour, you desperately want time to pursue your own non-kid-related interests (at least I do!).  

The real purpose of this post:
I was going to post some pictures from our trip to the strawberry farm in Alvin.....I took the boys on Monday and we met up with friends from my Bible study group.  We had a blast!!!  Now that it's finally warm, it's wonderful being able to spend entire mornings outside.  Froberg's Farm in Alvin (about 17 miles from us) is great....they have a perfect little farmer's market and a barbecue smokehouse, not to mention the strawberry-picking fields.  I will wait to post pictures, but the boys had so much fun picking berries and putting them in their buckets.  Drew (like Grant two years ago, when he was basically the same age) squished most of his as soon as he picked them.  But Grant remembered from watching Special Agent Oso (a Disney morning show, for grandparents and others who may not know) how to pick strawberries.....every time he picked one, he'd say, "twist, and pull" (just like he learned from Oso).  He had fun finding the red ones, and discerning which ones were better than others. 

Like I said, I will hopefully post pictures soon.  Our fence at the end of our cul-de-sac is being replaced, and the machines are making so much loud noise!  Right now it sounds like they're drilling straight into concrete....I have no idea what's going on, and was surprised the boys were still asleep....but Drew has started crying just in the past couple of minutes.  Now it's 3:33, so I guess an hour and twenty minutes will have to do for today!

Brothers

These little guys have been acting so silly. They're definitely playmates now.....Grant cares a lot about Drew, and he thinks of him as a friend instead of just his baby brother. They both instigate little games with the other (which usually involves tackling of some kind), and I'd say that they spend probably half of their playtime together. Now, about half of this time is spent fighting, but I guess that's probably a fact of life with brothers. They usually start off playing well, but what starts as a "game" gets a little bit frustrating to Drew, and before too long he's screaming. Or Drew might be playing with some toy, and Grant snaps it up when Drew puts it down for a second. So I'm constantly having to play referee, which is awfully tiring. And did I mention that they are VERY loud? Again, I'm just starting to realize that along with boys comes a lot of screaming.

For the most part, Grant is very good with Drew. He likes to play the part of "mommy," in a way, by asking him in a sweet voice, "Do you need some juice, Drew?" or at the end of a meal, "Are you ready to get down?" Then Drew nods his head, and Grant will tell me, "Mommy, Drew's done." Today at an Easter Egg hunt Drew fell on the sidewalk as we were leaving, and Grant went over and kissed each of his hands. Here are some cute pictures I took on St. Patrick's Day (see how behind I am with pictures?). Drew thought it was so funny to slap Grant on the head after dinner, and Grant played right along, acting like he was hurt, then coming right back for more!





Then Grant forced Drew to hit himself in the face with his own hand, which they also thought was hilarious!

Whew! That was tiring!

Free ice cream!

Today is Ben and Jerry's free ice cream day, from 12-8pm.

Go to their website to find a location close to you!

We've been busy and it's been hard finding time to blog.....we had a fun spring break last week and hopefully I'll get around to posting some pictures soon.

This should have been his Dan Quayle moment, but it won't be.

As a political and talk radio junkie, I've been following all of this health care stuff closely over the past few days. It just makes me fume to watch all of those Democratic leaders basically ramming this bill down our throats, with no regard as to what the American people want (and demonstrated when they elected a Republican senator to take Ted Kennedy's place in Massachusetts). It is beyond description, how far they're willing to go to get it passed. Completely disgraceful.

Anyway, I could go on and on. A couple of days ago, Obama was in Ohio and I'm sure many people saw his quote regarding health care premiums. He said that this bill would reduce by an estimated 3,000 percent the health care premiums that companies pay for their employees. Then he said, "so, that means you could get a raise." Of course the crowd went wild. I heard this on the radio and thought, this doesn't make any sense. You can increase something by 3000%, but you can't decrease something by 3000%. You can only decrease something by 100% before it gets to zero!

And then yesterday, Rush Limbaugh even gave an example on his radio show. Say company XYZ pays $4,000 per employee for health care premiums each year. A 3000 percent decrease in their health care premiums would mean that the insurance company would then be paying company XYZ $120,000 per employee per year. It makes no sense at all. In fact, if George Bush had made a mistake like this in a speech, it's all you would have heard about on the talk shows and news reports for a week. But since it was Obama, nobody even seems to notice or fact check his numbers (except on conservative talk radio). Not that this is surprising, but it's still infuriating. He just continues to mislead people, and apparently he's not ever going to be called on it!

An interesting thing to see.....

Drew's sleep has been driving me crazy the past couple of weeks. He's been waking up at random hours throughout the night, then every five minutes afterward for as long as I will put up with it. For example, he might wake up at 1am (crying for his blanky....he settles down as soon as I give it to him), then I'm barely back asleep when I hear him crying again. And then a few minutes later he does it again. He's learned to throw his blanky on the floor, because he assumes I'll come back in to give it to him every time.

Now I'm not really putting up with it anymore.....I'll give him his blanky once, but the next time I might let him cry for 20 minutes before giving it to him again. It seems to be working a little. And in the mornings (he first wakes up at 5:50 or 6am, which just seems way too early), I'll give him his blanky once, then I'll have to just let him cry if I haven't showered by the next time he wakes up.

So this morning, I heard him crying as I got out of the shower. In about ten minutes I was ready to go downstairs (Grant had woken up and come into our room by that point), and Grant and I went to get Drew. We walked into Drew's room, but Drew wasn't in his crib. He was sitting on the floor, a few feet away from his crib. What the heck??!! It was so bizarre. If he fell out just before I came in, I would've heard some kind of thud, right? If he fell out while I was in the shower, wouldn't he have found his way to the door and come out? Granted, it was still very dark outside (6:40am, which is still dark after the time change), but surely his eyes would have adjusted enough to find his way to the door?

Anyway, it's still quite a mystery to me. I've never seen him come anywhere close to climbing out of his crib, and he's only 17 months old. He's definitely not ready for a toddler bed.....so hopefully this won't happen again. It made me feel a little guilty for letting him cry, though, knowing he was laying on the floor in his room while I was taking my time getting ready. Oops....just another one of those "bad mommy" moments, I guess!