A Day in the Life of Gus- 11/19/13

Every once in a while I'm going to try to capture details of how my day goes.  I wish I would have done this when Lachlan was a baby cause would be interesting to look back at BUT...I don't think I ever would have had the time to do it cause he was such a handful!

This post is a little late, but is from Tuesday 11/19/13- so Makenzie was exactly 3 weeks old.  For the first 2 weeks either Dustin or my mom was here, so this was the first week it was all on my own!

1:05AM:  Makenzie wakes up, but is a little early from when she normally feeds, so I just rock her and she goes back to sleep.

2:15AM: Up again, this time I give her a 3 oz. bottle and she is back to sleep at 2:40.

4:45AM:  Makenzie is up.  I change her diaper and make a 2 oz. bottle but she hardly takes any of the bottle before dozing off.

5:50AM: Lachlan decides he is a rooster and to get up at the crack of dawn. 

The good part of this is that Dustin is still home, so he can get him up and dressed for me.  I'm awake, but just lay in bed relaxing.  Lachlan comes and joins me in bed to watch tv.

6:15AM: Makenzie is up again, so I rock her until she settles back to sleep, but only until 6:30.  I feed her a 2 oz. bottle and then change her diaper cause she has pooped.

7:00AM: I decide to go ahead and shower- Makenzie usually enjoys the relaxing noise of the shower and doesn't mind hanging out in there. 

I have everything ready at 7:30 to take Lachlan to school.  However, I let him play on the iPad for a bit before we head out the door.

7:50AM: We take Lachlan to school.  I put Makenzie's carseat in the stroller to wheel her in so I can minimize lifting.  Lachlan is happy to be at school!

8:15AM: We are back home.  I put her in the swing so I can eat some breakfast and relax!

9:15AM: I feed her a 3 oz. bottle and put her back in the swing.  She is asleep at 9:30.

10:30AM:  I fall asleep watching tv on the couch and sleep until noon!  This sounds good, but now I feel more tired.  I lounge about watching Family Feud...yes, I enjoy game shows...especially during the limited daytime tv options! 

12:30PM:  She wakes up, so I change her poopy diaper again.  And I feed her another 3 oz. bottle and put her in the Boppy Lounger.

1:30PM:  Time for lunch!  I heat up my food and start eating...and of course, Miss Makenzie starts crying.  So I stop eating and hold her until she calms down.

2:00PM:  Finish eating my lunch and she is back in the lounger.  She just drifts in and out of sleep, so I decide to get some chores done.  I cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed (which she LOVED and put her to sleep), made the guest bed, and started working on birth announcements.

4:30PM: Makenzie wakes up after sleeping about 2 hours, so I feed her a 2 oz. bottle and we load into the car to go get Lachs.  Home at 5:40 from picking him up. 

6:00PM: Dustin is home and we eat dinner.  Lachlan is always the first to finish, so we let him go watch Elmo while we finish dinner. 

Once I'm done eating, I give Makenzie another bottle.

A little before 7:00 we go upstairs to play until bath/bed time.

7:15PM:  Dustin gives Lachlan his bath.  Makenzie is fussy, so I am trying to calm her.  Dustin reads Lachlan his bedtime stories.

 

8:00PM:  Lachlan is in bed.  We go to the media room to catch up on an old Homeland episode.  Makenzie is still fussy, but finally falls asleep on Dustin around 8:30 while we are watching it.  We watch a little bit of a David Blaine magic show afterwards until she wakes up.

9:30PM: I head off to bed while Dustin stays up to give Makenzie her last bottle before bed.  I play a little candy crush.  The plan is to try having her sleep in the guest bedroom so that way she is close to our room, but far enough away I won't hear all of her grunting and noises.  I can't fall asleep cause can hear poor Lachlan coughing really badly in his room, so am worried about him.  And Dustin does not seem to be having an easy time with Makenzie...she has pooped 3 times in 15 minutes and he is getting all worked up and frustrated with her.

10:15PM:  I "unplug" and close my eyes knowing I have to be tired and will eventually fall asleep.  And I slept great until 2:15AM when the cycle starts all over again!!

Lachlan - 23 months

I really can't believe my next Lachlan post will be for his 2 YEAR birthday...oh, where does the time go?!?!  I really think every few months I keep changing my mind that this is the best/cutest stage, but I REALLY love this stage he is in now and am so lucky to be home spending some more time with him than usual.

 And then he really waned to put his sticker on Teddy and take more pictures...

He really got into pumpkins- he loved going for stroller rides and walks around the neighborhood looking for pumpkins.  We went to the Dallas Arboretum which had a HUGE pumpkin display- I think it was something like over 30,000 pumpkins!  He enjoyed that and got to bring home 3 little pumpkins.  He would just carry them around outside and move them around the landscaping.  However, as much as he loved pumpkins...he appeared not to be a fan of Halloween.  I had bought the cutest Elmo costume, but he screamed and had a tantrum every time I tried to put it on him....so back to the store it went!  Maybe next year he'll want to dress up and go trick or treating. 

It was fine with me cause he spent Halloween at the hospital with me and spending time with his new sister Makenzie!  He has been an awesome Big Brother and WAAAAY better than I thought he would be.  I really thought he would be trying to pick her up or do dangerous things with/to her.  So far he just really isn't all that overly interested in her.  He has been pretty gentle with touching her...or at least attempts to be gentle.  When he wakes up, he always asks where "bebe" is and wants to see her and he always says "bye bebe" before he goes to bed.  He always refers to her as "bebe." I was a tad worried how he would handle us being at the hospital for 4 days, but he had no issues leaving us there! And he doesn't seem to have any jealousy issues with the baby eating a lot of my time.

Loves pumpkins, can finally say Grandma, refused to wear elmo costume, Big brother!

The boy is becoming a little chatterbox...and I love it!  There are many times I can't understand him, and he is so patient and doesn't get frustrated.  He is string several words together for short phrases - and has been doing this for at least a month or so, but think I keep forgetting to mention it!  One of his first phrases was "I see you!"  He is starting to sing words to songs like Old MacDonald, Wheels on Bus, Elmo's World, etc.  One of his big achievements is he can finally say "Grandma" which he struggled really bad with before and usually wouldn't even attempt to say it.

He can count clearly to 13 and he attempts numbers after that, but all the "teens" sound the same.  He can also identify some of the numbers.  He can identify all letters of alphabet in upper case and most in lower case.  He still is not really getting the hang of colors or shapes yet.  He gets them right sometimes where I think he may know them, but then will go on a streak of getting them all wrong...so who knows.

This boy never really enjoyed being held, sitting on laps, snuggling, etc. but lately he has got much better and will snuggle up by us while watching tv. He has also really taken to his stuffed animals and gray blanket he sleeps with at home.  He is really good about giving out kisses and hugs too.  As always, he is really good about going to sleep for naps and bedtime- I am SO appreciative of his, especially with the new baby to deal with now.  Immediately when he finishes lunch, he puts his hand to his head and says "Nighty Night" and heads upstairs. 

He is going to school only 3 days a week now while I'm on maternity leave.  He seems to really like going there now- one of his teachers (Ms. Jessica) came back that had left and Lachlan really seems to take to her.

Hauling around his "heavy" pumpkins

Last picture of our family of 3 before I headed to the hospital

At the hospital to meet his new sister!

Grandma babysat for the week while we were at the hospital

Bringing baby sister home

Lachlan - 22 months

Well, this post is a full month beyond, so it will be short to just include the few notes I had made.  Pictures were a real trip this month as you can see...

Lachlan still just LOVES the ABCs.  He will sing along with us-- he can generally make it through the entire way, but of course can't pronounce everything correctly.  He can identify a lot of the letters of the alphabet it seems.  He plays endless alphabet on ipad and LOVES it-- and I actually think this is primarily responsible for him learning the letters so well.

He still loves ANYTHING on ipad or iphone.  He says "pictures" when he wants to play on those...I guess he says pictures because it started out that he just wanted to look at pictures/videos, but now he spends more time playing apps.

He is progressing with counting.  We count the steps every time we go upstairs and he counts along with us-- it's not real clear, but seems like he can count along with us up to 20.  Of course a lot of the teens all sound the same and are kinda mumble-jumble.

His favorite toy is probably Legos (aka blocks).  His favorite book is probably Goodnight Gorilla to read before bed.  He has a very set routine with the book where on each page he has certain things he likes to be quizzed on- e.g. Where is the giraffe?  Where is the armadillo?

He is getting very good at reading books himself and imitating my voice and saying key words.  I absolutely love catching him reading on his own and is so cute to listen to him!

I'm not sure yet if he enjoys school or not-- many days he cries or has tantrums refusing to get in the car to go in the mornings, but then seems fine once he is there.

His schedule really remains the same.  Bed time is between about 7:30-8 and we try to do a bath every other night.  We are finally getting some days where he is sleeping in late until like 8:00, so has been a nice change!  Some days he is an awesome eater and other days he will hardly eat anything on his plate or refuses foods that I know he likes!  I noticed I am really bad with offering him vegetables, so need to work on offering those more often and trying to get him to eat those.

He had lots of first-time visitors this last month to Texas:

My cousins- Jeremy and Grant

Grandma Tina

"Aunt Miss"

Here are some pics from the last month:

He is always cracking us up doing goofy things while eating

Lachlan LOVED feeding all the animals at the pumpkin patch- no fear at all!

Lachlan - 21 months!

Unfortunately, blogging has become a pain in the butt with our laptop which uses Windows 8...still not sure how the rest of the world is managing to get by using it cause it just plain old SUCKS to the point that I can't do the simplest of things anymore.  I'm not sure if I need to switch to a different blog site that is better compatible or what to do to fix it, but all of these posts take me 10 times longer to do than they should.  Throughout the month, I will just save notes to a draft blog post so that way I don't forget things...then at the end of the month I clean up the wording and add pictures and post it for all to see.  This month I'm just giving up messing with it...for the last 30 minutes I've attempted to modify the text below and it just simply won't let me....my curser just disappears!  So instead you just get my notes in draft form...some which may not even make sense, but oh well!  At least I managed to get some pictures added!

Well, he survived his first full month as a Texan!  I really can't believe how quickly he is approaching 2 years old and wish I could just freeze him at this age a bit longer.



Struggled with daycare dropoffs, but seems to have fun most days.  Has a twin Boom.  Love having camera to check on things and see what he is up to.  Eats like a king there- can't believe the nice food he gets served!

Mornings stress me out a bit and I have it so easy that we have no set schedule since I work from home and really don't need to shower or get ready too much.  He doesn't like most of his new shoes and still wants to wear his old ones that are too small or falling apart, so that is a battle.  Then I have to apply sunscreen and he hates that.  So then we finally get out the door and then is another battle to get him into the car and into his carseat.  It just eats up so much extra time and is frustrating.

Loves to count and picking up on it.  Stacked blocks and clearly counted from 5 to 10.  Loves the ABCs even more.  He will stop dead in his tracks of what he is doing if he hears the ABCs.  He attempts to sing along and definitely knows pieces of it.  He LOVES Elmo still and will sing along to Elmo's World.  He just still loves all music and the action songs.  He really likes ring around the rosie and the mulberry bush, but we try to minimize that since it involves us up and moving around too!

Huge improvement with using silverware.  At daycare he doesn't really have anyone helping him so is forced to figure it out if he wants to eat.  I make sure to use a bib at home cause it slides off the food sometimes, but he gets most in his mouth.  Figured out how to hold the bowl or container with his other hand to help spoon it out.

Has started waking during the nights crying. This is pretty unusual so thought maybe he wasn't feeling well or was just scared being in a new place.  However, it keeps happening about twice/week.  The problem is that even once we go up there, he is wide awake FOREVER and then goes nuts when try to put him back in his crib.  We've laid on the floor up there with him and also next to his crib and he is okay with that...but not ideal way to get sleep when 7 months pregnant or a husband working long hours.  We've tried the PNP in our bedroom, but he wanted none of that.  We've tried bringing him to our bed and he is happy there and not crying, but the problem is that he does not sleep.  We'll give him 1-2 hours and he is still awake, so he just can't lay down and relax with us.

Loves looking for airplanes and birds in the sky. Also loves listening for cars, trucks, and motorcycles...and he can look out his bedroom window to see them.

It's amazing all the stuff he knows and picks up on that we don't even point out or teach him.  I swear every day he amazes me with something he says or knows.  Like he knew that I'm Amy and daddy is Dustin.  He can work a few puzzles he has where the hole does not show the picture of the piece, so he has to figure it out based on the shape and surroundings.

I mad him a lego table and he spends SO much time here building towers and choos-choos.  Most of our blocks have the alphabet on them, so he makes sure to get all the letters facing the correct way.  He gets a little frustrated sometimes when he can't get one on easily or the tower collapses, but he is getting better at working through it.

He is understanding more and more in his books.  He will sometimes read to himself and is my favorite thing to listen to him do.  He is so good at imitating my tone and actions.  I'll be able to pick up on key words throughout the gibberish.  He also loves acting out his books-- he will insist on standing up for Let's Dance Little Pookie so he can do the actions.  For goodnight moon, he has started to point to the objects on the pages as I say them.

Loves walking backwards, doing happy feet, jumping, and flips!

Taken to a monkey at school

Calls pacifier a nurse, started calling us Mommy and Daddy....love it!

Stopped throwing food and even brings his dishes over to the sink

Every time after he sneezes he says Bless You.  Will not say it if someone else sneezes.