They are just cute. There is nothing more to say!
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Month: January 2009
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Quiet Time Battles
This is how I found Chase the other day in his room at nap time. It’s always interesting to see how he ends up since he is adamant about not getting in bed or having quiet time alone in his room! But he still gets tired so he falls asleep wherever he is.
Chase has been protesting nap time and bed time more than ever since Charlotte was born, and it has been a major test of our patience. I’ve realized that he might not need a nap every day any more…. But since he gets up around 6:30 am every day, I definitely still need a little break after those 6-7 hours of action! People have recommended making him have a “quiet time” in which he can color, read, whatever he wants, just in his room alone. Hm, my question is, how do you achieve this? Well, I’ve had to experiment with various forms of discipline.
Time outs didn’t work in this case because he would just keep getting off the chair and I kept having to put him back on. This is not realistic though because I have a baby now, who can’t be ignored! One day after 2 hours of putting Chase back on the time out chair, I was super exhausted and gave up, and yes, I cried from all the frustration I felt… He is quite a persistent boy, I must say! We also tried a sticker chart and that worked sometimes, but one day he ripped it up and then after he had finally completed the 4-day chart, he seemed to be “over it.”
So then I just resorted to my friend Becky’s suggestion of putting a child lock on the inside of his door. Before you think me an evil mom who relishes locking her child in his room, read on for a moment. He gets to keep his door open during the 1 hour of quiet time as long as he doesn’t scream or come out of his room. If he does, then I close the door. So far, I have been consistent, and it seems to be working. The door doesn’t even get closed very often anymore! Whhew, we’ll see if it continues this way! No more quiet time “battles” please!
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Bath Time!
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Obama the sellout
I not an Obama hater, and I’m not a fanboy. What I do know is that Obama destroyed the two exciting things in my depression. Mandatory digital transition and free nationwide internet. WHAT a sell out. In office a week and the first thing he does is delay something that’s been going on for 3 years!! PAALEASE. If you’re not ready by now, you’re working for terrorists, and since Obama wanted to help the terrorists who aren’t ready for the digital transition, he is obviously a terrorist. And since he floats, he obviously is also a witch.
Oh and there are new McVideos
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Somebody should blog
This McBlog is kinda… slow, it’s like you’ve had a baby or something… how about some new content, and where’s a new McVideo for crying out loud!?
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Deathray Training Day 1
Thought I’d update you on the first day of Liferay training. The church is beautiful. I wish I had a camera to take pictures… the LIferay corporate headquarters is located in an active church. The address sign says the church’s name, no Liferay ANYWHERE! I had to call to find it, after I drove directly there. We are meeting in Sunday school room 4. Liferay is two rooms of Chinese people in the annex. It’s RAD. Today was a great overview of all the stuff I taught myself over the last 7 months. Tom looks like it should be some good new stuff. As far as useful, I do get lots of personal time with the liferay folks. Got lots of answers, turns out that automatic SEO friendly urls is in 5.2 (we are running 5.1.1), that subdomains like trainers.vitalsmarts.com, associates.vitalsmarts.com, etc. IS possible, and getting rid of the /web/ in the URL IS also possible. Silly IT people. So I’ll try to get as many how to’s on those tom. My impressions thus far is that we are trying to kill a bug with a bulldozer. There are three of us in the training, the other two guys work for companies 2000+…. I didn’t mention that we almost have 80. Anyhoooo Training was a bit slow today as the other two guys kept having problems during the excercise sections.. ha good thing I had a year to practice. One other thing I think we could’ve setup trainer zone as an organization instead of as a community.. but oh well. Aight, hope you enjoyed your DAY OFF.
I’ve gone and left the family for a few days. I’m in diamond bar CA, in a hotel with free internet… hehehe…. I’m here for Liferay training. What is liferay you ask? Don’t worry you’ll never need to use it. Anyway, my flight out was very fun, I sat next to the second largest person on the plane. She ased if she could swap seats with me, I had the aisle, so I ased how much cash she had. Thankfully I pulled my legs out from her thigh a few times to stretch out down the aisle. Picked up my AVIS rental car after denying the additional everything. After getting in the car and looking at the map, I went back in and got the optional Garmin Nuvi GPS navigator. WOW is this thing cool. Now let me explain up to this point I wasn’t enjoying the trip very much and had it decided that I don’t really like travelling. BUT now… oh now, I have a best friend to come with me. And it knows everything. I drove straight to my hotel with only one wrong turn (user error) and My friend Garmin found an In and Out Burger just down the road. I think tom Garmin is going to show me where the nearest steakhouse is. I’m SO excited. So honey if you ever want to go travel the world with me, that’s fine as long as I have the latest GPS unti in my hands and some rechargable batteries. Well, have fun, I’m sure I’ll see you tom, as I don’t have anyone to hang out with here (thanks for not answering your phone Gino)
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LOST Season 5
A great video came out this summer, that you need to see before season 5.
Watch the video and read/watch a summary of DHARMA
Good stuff, discuss in the comments::::
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Our Cabin-Feverish Life!
We have been staying inside most of the time nowadays, but every once in a while we get to sneak out. When my mom was still here, my sister Rach and I escaped to the mall while my mom stayed here with the children. We came home to see this cute little scene:
Thank you so much to my mom (and family) for coming and helping us out. Unfortunately, my mom had to leave last Saturday, but we are getting by (somehow)! I am quite exhausted, but overall things are fine. I have a supportive and loving husband, people from our ward are bringing dinner, and a couple people are letting Chase come over to play, which is the biggest help of all!
We are happy that Charlotte has joined our family (and I am happy to no longer have her in the womb)!!! She is so cuddly and easygoing, and has been awake more over the last few days.
Chase still loves his baby sister, usually manifest in more forceful ways than I would like, but I know his intentions are good! He really likes to kiss her, smell her, and just be near her.
He also calls his little sister “Charlotte-lee” and says things like “Here comes Chasie!” to her in a soft, high-pitched, cooing voice. Here he is reading her a book and introducing her to Elmo.
I make an effort to find bits of time to spend with Chase, because I know he needs it! I have been battling with feeling guilty and anxious about what goes undone around the house and not spending enough time with Chase. Parents out there (like Becky S. and Amber P. and others that I tremendously respect) how do you fight off the guilt? I know I can’t do everything and I know things don’t all have to get done around the house, but it’s hard for me to just shrug it off! I’ll get used to it, hopefully.
Yesterday we went on a walk and tromped around in the snow at the park; it was nice to be outside for a while. Chase has been literally bouncing off the walls with this whole staying inside thing! Over the last couple of days, he fell down the stairs and also did a weird backflip off his bed onto the floor, in addition to the regular head/bodily injuries he usually acquires.
…So, any advice on how to get a non-independent child to play on his own for a few minutes at a time so I don’t resort to TV while I’m trying to feed the baby? While Chase IS a very helpful boy, he is with me every second of the day except for the blessed nap time! And look how sweet he is when he sleeps!
My brain is too fuzzy to think of a better title for this blog entry! Anyway, it’s been a week and a half since little Charlotte was born, and things have been going pretty well. I’m really tired, because newborns are tiring, but luckily my recovery has been amazing this time around, and we’re also glad to have Grandma T. here to help out. (My dad and Gino were here for a few days, too, which was great!)
But sadly, Grandma goes home soon, and after that, we’ll see if I survive… But I am happy to report that baby Charlotte is such a calm, sweet baby! I love smelling her baby scent and just holding her close. She’s a pretty good eater and a great burper, and only wakes to eat about 3 times at night, which is SO great. Actually, she sleeps almost all the time, unless she’s eating, pooping, burping, being jumped on by Chase, etc.
As for big brother Chase, he loves Charlotte very much, and he’s quite cute with her. However, he tends to enjoy smothering/squishing/”loving” her a LOT. He has definitely noticed that I don’t spend as much time with him as I did before, so he’s been acting up and wanting to be with me every second just like before, including when I go to the bathroom. I really hope he adjusts over time so I can rest a little even after Grandma leaves!
Everyone has told me to stay home and “hibernate” for the winter so Charlotte doesn’t get sick… But it’s such a dilemma; I’ve been SO antsy and we’ve already gone out at least 6 times! It’s been nice to have the extra hands of my mom when we go places. I’ll probably have to start the “hibernation” after she leaves!
It is still hard to believe that Pace and I have two children now. We can already see that Chase and Charlotte have very different personalities, and we love them both so much!
