made.it

I got up this morning at 6:40 and had breakfast with Josh! I finished reading Esther this morning...more about that next week.

I'm just pumped that I set my goal and accomplished it! Woohoo.

Now, if I can just do it next week, that will be great. Time will tell.

Happy Labor Day to everyone! We're going to the lake...sing along if you know it...
We're going to the lake, lake, lake.
Maybe have some cake, cake, cake.
Lots of fun we'll make, make, make.
When we're at the lake, lake, lake.

Yes, my kids sing this all the time. Yes, my mom made it up with them. Yes, it's borderline obnoxious, but they love it so I love it. Yay for Grandmas, yay for songs!

oops.

I just realized that it is 11:12, and it's past my bedtime....goodnight!

6:28 a.m.

Josh left SUPER early this morning because he's coming home early from work to try to finish the siding on the front of the house. Needless to say, I did NOT get up at 5:15 when he did. No thank you.

Reading Esther yesterday a.m.: 15 minutes before two little critters were sitting in my lap
Bedtime last night: 11:00 pm
This morning wake up: 6:28 am (it was a little earlier for Amelia to eat, but that's what time I put her back in bed and got up myself)

I feel better this morning than I have all week. I definitely like going to bed earlier. It feels SO good. One more day to finish off the week...21 days is a habit? I've got a few days left on that one!

morning.2

photo by Yago Spain

Ok, so it's 6:59, and I am awake again. It helped this morning that Amelia wanted to eat at 6:00. I got to stay in bed a few minutes longer to feed her (and wake myself up before having breakfast with Josh). It worked well.

We went to bed at 10:45 last night! It was fantastic. Josh said, "I can't believe we're going to bed this early!" So true. Often he falls asleep on the couch while I'm still up doing things. So, it's not really that he's sleeping any longer; he's just getting more uninterrupted sleep. That's good, too, though...and I don't have to drag him off the couch before we go to bed.

Yesterday morning: I did get some reading of Esther in before the pitter-patter of little feet came into the kitchen. However, Claire and Meredith were both up before 8:00. Too early. They are used to getting in bed with me and falling back asleep. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll realize that they won't find me in bed, and they'll just stay in their own beds!

Meredith was so tired after our zoo trip yesterday that she fell asleep on the way home (about 2:00) and slept until after 5:00. No problems going to bed, though. I think she was exhausted from getting up so early...I felt the same way.

Jill called me yesterday morning around 7:45 (an hour and a half after I woke up) and said I sounded like I just got out of bed. I felt like I had just gotten out of bed! I was very tired in the morning, again for a bit in the afternoon, but I really wasn't all that tired after the kids went to bed. Although, they did need a bath before bedtime last night, and I just couldn't muster up the energy to put them in the tub. I decided I'd rather do that today than put the effort into it last night.

It kind of seems like it might be a rainy day. Or maybe it just looks like this at 7:15...I don't know...I'm usually still sleeping. Good day for a bath.

By the way, as I'm wrapping this up...I have a certain little 3 year old sitting on my lap. Boo.

Maybe this getting up early thing isn't going to be the best idea. I'm going to try coerce her into going back to sleep. Hopefully, I can stay awake through it :)

**UPDATE: It is now 7:44, and everyone is sleeping again...except me, of course.

score.of.44

I can't believe I didn't do better than 44! After they show you all of the words that you didn't get, you feel really silly. It's fun though!

If you've got 5 minutes (that's all the time they give you), go check out THIS link. You get to try to guess the 100 most popular words in the English language.

Post your score if you dare...especially if you do better than me :) I'm guessing that my sister will be the first one to post her super-high score on this one. No cheating, Jill. Ok, I'm conceding already; she typically beats me at word games!

one.for.two

First of all, I'm doing better than this lady...

image by takingthechallenge

...I don't drink coffee. Maybe I should start. Well, it's 6:21 a.m., and I'm awake. That's the good news. The bad news is that I went to bed at 11:46 p.m. That is 46 minutes later than I wanted to get there! However, I went to Ladies Night Out last night with our church ladies...so much fun. And I definitely needed that time out. So, even though I totally should have been in bed already, I'm going to extend grace to myself for this one. And besides, it's more the "getting up early" part that I'm concerned about!

AND, on top of everything, after I went to bed at 11:46....I looked at the clock at 12:12 and still wasn't asleep. Hopefully, that will change tonight since I'm up so early this morning. I need to wrap up so that I can eat breakfast and read.

I know you're reading this, so thanks for planning a fun night out C.W. :) Can't wait until next time.

wanted:early.riser

I need help. Some of you are shaking your heads "yes" already! But, not that kind. I am trying to become more of a morning person.

You see, since Claire was born 5+ years ago, I've pretty much just slept in until someone woke me up (which is typically like 9:00 in the morning). It's worked well for me. It isn't working well anymore.

I'm getting to the point where I need to be up before my children. I know that I get more accomplished when they are not running through my house. I want to focus my attention on ONE thing at a time through parts of my day. I am a HUGE multi-tasker which works well for a lot of tasks, but not for all.

We go to bed fairly late around here....maybe like 11:30-12:00 on a typical night. It needs to be earlier.

All this to say, that I'm blogging about this so that I am accountable. If people know about it, I'll be more apt to do it! Here are my 3 goals (just for the rest of this week...baby steps)...

1. I will eat breakfast with Josh every morning (he'll like this one a lot...it's like 6:30 a.m.). 2. I will do my daily devos (I'm currently studying Esther, so it's a pretty good read for that early in the morning) before the kids get up. 3. I will go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00.

Oh....and I will blog my times and accomplishments daily so that you all know. Four days in a row, I will do this. Then, we'll move on to next week :)

seriously.august 23

nursing baby + 2 new teeth = OUCH!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Seriously.

tooth.treasures

Claire lost her first tooth on Sunday evening. We were celebrating birthdays with Josh's family, and her tooth was extremely loose. It had been loose for several days, but it had become very wiggly over the weekend. It was just barely hanging on, and Josh said, "Just pull it out." And she did.



Instead of the whole tooth fairy deal, I decided to Google alternatives to the tooth fairy. We've come up with "Tooth Treasures". Instead of giving her money or candy or whatever, she gets a special activity that she gets to help plan. We wrote her a nice little letter telling her congrats and that we're excited for her. This time, she gets to have a tea party and plan the menu.



I printed out the little note and attached it to a piece of construction paper. She still put the tooth under her pillow, and she found her tooth treasure when she woke up in the morning. She was pretty excited :) She loves tea parties!

first.day.of.kindergarten

Monday was Claire's first day of kindergarten! As I write this, we've finished our third day of school. So far, we've done the following:

-3 lessons in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (After our first lesson, Claire replied, "But I still don't know how to read!" Cute.).

-We've plotted Germany on our world map (where Martin Luther lived...he was our first history guy).

-We've made designs using pattern blocks for math (Saxon Math). Meredith really enjoys our math lessons.

-We're reading The Boxcar Children for our read-aloud (Sonlight Curriculum). Everyone enjoys this as well!

-We've made some crafts to do our Olympic events. And today we did a special "Pet Shop Olympics" in which we set up all of our animals and did animal-oriented Olympics...very fun for the girls.

So far, things seem to be going smoothly. This morning, Claire was up a little early and Meredith was still in bed. I took the opportunity to get through our History lesson before Meredith awoke. It worked rather well, and we may take this approach more often! I am really looking forward to her reading her first word. I know she'll be so excited about it. It will come this coming Monday during Lesson 6. She'll read the word "me". She's currently learning the sounds (mmmmm, sssss, aaaaa, eeeee, nnnnnn). So far, so good.

Here are some pictures from our first day:

faces.of.teething

Amelia got her first tooth last week...only 4 months old. My other girls didn't get theirs until 6 and 7 months. I think this is pretty fast, but what can I say? She's advanced. She was pretty fussy a couple of days last week. Here is a small sampling of what we saw on a few different occasions (these are in real-time order by the way!)...

Face #1: "My Gums Really, Really Hurt!"

Face #2: "Ok, I Think I Might Survive"

Face #3: "You're Looking At Me Like I've Got Drool All Over My Face"

Face #4: "Chewing On Fingers"

Face #5 "For the Love of All That is Good, Will You Please Put That Camera Down and Comfort Me?!!"

cabinet.hardware

This is not a super-exciting post for anyone other than me (or anyone who comes and works in my kitchen), but we finally have cabinet hardware in our kitchen! This is so exciting because our drawers (love them) have that safety feature that doesn't allow you to slam them. They are great for the kids, but if you don't have "pulls" on the cabinet drawers, it's pretty hard to open them. They kind of have a "stick" feature when you try to open them. Anyway, thank you hubby for getting them up...love it, love it, love it.

seriously.august 17

I'm going to be posting like mad...if I have time this week. Here's why:

Amelia got her first tooth.

Claire lost her first tooth.

The big, big bonfire rocked!

Claire starts kindgergarten tomorrow. *sniff*

We're homeschooling, and I'm still emotional about it! *sniff* (again)

Seriously.

winners.all.around

I totally just won the drawing for Darcy's recipe book! I am p-u-m-p-e-d to say the least. Thanks Darcy :)

And, I must say that I was a bit disappointed with the lack of guesses on Amelia's 4 month appointment. I mean, my mom didn't even guess...what's up with that? I think people must be on vacation :) That being said, everyone who did participate is getting a prize. Although, the closest guess goes to...SARAH! I'll track down your address soon and get a lovely piece of artwork out to you.

Amelia's 4 month stats:
11 lb. 9 oz.
23 1/2 inches
cry time: 1 min. 30 seconds

She did a great job! Unfortunately, she had to share her appointment day with Meredith who had to get a monster splinter removed. She kept crying, "Owie, owie, ooowwwiiiieee!" She's not a fighter, though. She pretty much just laid there and cried. Great job Meredith! Grandma gave her M&Ms when she was done (and the nurses gave her a popsicle). I think I want a splinter.


Oh, and my kids rock. They are doing crafts (which keeps them incredibly busy for like an hour at a time) with construction paper, glue, and little styrofoam trays. AND, they washed all of my non-dishwasher (and non-dangerous) dishes. They love to do dishes, and I love that I don't have to do them. Totally a win/win for everyone.

guess.it

Is she adorable or what?!!

Ok, we're having another little contest! BIG, BIG prize this time (ok, just a recent coloring page from Claire or Meredith). Remember, Aunt Jill won the last contest, so she's the one to beat. Watch your back, Aunt Jill.

Amelia's 4 month doctor appointment is this Tuesday. Post your guesses:

How much does she weigh?

How long is she?

How long will she cry after her shots?

Background stats:

Birth-6 lb. 4 oz./19 inches

2 month-8 lb. 14 oz./22 inches

You have until 6:00 on Tuesday evening to post your guesses. I expect LOTS of guesses this time around! All of you lurkers out there, you know who you are (ahem...Josh's coworkers), I want to see some guesses people!

seriously.august 8

I love the questions that my kids ask...

Meredith: Mom, are strawberries made from ladybugs?

Seriously :)

toilet.on.the.porch

So, the girls and I (and nanny Aunt Jill) went to the lake over the weekend. Josh was staying home to install the new windows in the kitchen and to work on the siding on the front of the house. Great. We drive into the driveway and see this:

This is what it looked like a month ago:

This is what it looked like a year ago:

We decided that all looked good...that is until we pulled right up to the house to see this:

As good as the house looked, we decided that the toilet on the porch kind of ruined the whole look. I had to take pictures. The funny part was when Josh responds, "You know, I've worked really hard to get the siding done on the house, and all you can take pictures of is the TOILET!" Well, it makes for a better blog post, don't ya think?


Anyway, the toilet in the main bath needed replaced because the base was cracked. We put in a cool new "greener" toilet. We're not really that green overall, but it was pretty nemo...ahem neat-o...and I just couldn't resist a flush that cleaned out my toilet better. You know me, always one to not feel like she has to clean as much. (My mom is shaking her head right now.)

For all of you that come to visit, it has a nifty gadget to flush it (the 1/2 flush and the full flush). You can view the instruction video of the new toilet if you click on the link. It's almost amusing (and then you'll know which button to push to flush). Who knew that the 1.6 gallon flush would be as "equally impressive" as the .8 gallon flush? Who knew that this was something to blog about? I am certain everyone will sleep better tonight because of this new-found information.



And in honor of my hubby's hard (and great!) work, here are a couple more pics of the siding. Big improvement.

seriously.august 6

Several:

1. Claire had her soccer games last night. She barely moved for the first 58 minutes of the first game. The second game was much better.

2. My new friend (of a friend) Sarah totally put me on her blog list. We can be friends.

3. The toilet pictures will be posted in the near future.

Seriously.

seriously.august 3

There was a toilet on my front porch when I arrived home today.

I have pictures.

Seriously.