Where was I....oh yes, infancy was not so natural like I thought it would be.
I guess it wasn't awkward, but I just wasn't sure what to do ALL DAY long with a baby who couldn't express himself in way I understood yet. The whole babies just eat, sleep, and poop, is a lie too. May some do? Cap was a great sleep until 4 months old too, but there was still a lot of daylight in between eat, sleep, and pooping.
Between 4-6 months Cap stopped sleeping. Wow, that was rough. He didn't even take naps hardly. We called them capnaps. Short 30 minute things that left him just hard to entertain. At first I didn't care because he was still sleeping through the night, but then that stopped too. At 6 months old, we took him to a friends retirement party and stayed up till close till 9 pm. He woke up almost every hour that night. I was miserable and at my end so I sought some sleep guidance.
After 3 days into sleep training Cap, we had a great schedule going. He was so much happier, he could concentrate again on thing, and I for the first time in a while was enjoying the mom gig. What a difference sleep will make!
Finally a month into it, the thought of another baby didn't make me want to throw up. Up till that point I was scared I might never want to do this again. The way my body was I don't think I was physically able to have another one that soon, but at least the thought didn't make me sick!
I was still having a hard time with my role as a mother. I struggled with whether or not I was good at "it". I also missed doing the things that I loved especially the ones I did with Bryce. By not having kids until I was almost 30, I had a lot of time to do great things "freely". A tight sleep schedule and a breastfed baby doesn't leave a whole lot of "freely" in the day. Going from traveling the world, running ultra-marathons, baptizing friends in the Merced River, climbing mountains, shows at coffee houses, teaching and discipling young adults, to Full Time Caretaker of a little helpless boy was just a tougher transition than I ever expected. Because every time I climbed a mountain or spent my entire morning running, I knew one day I wanted to have children and stay at home with them full time.
So I kept trying to figure out how to have both worlds.
Oh and at 8 months, it hit me that I was ready to have another baby. Crazy I know. In the midst of struggling in my mom role, there will still times of peace. I was ready to have another one to disciple and love on. A couple months later we were able to get into the doctor and have my IUD removed.
Some where around that time, we started waking up at 6. I LOVE mornings, and when Cap came around, well, mornings just weren't the same. I was okay with that, but I needed to find some sort of medium with it all and some time where I could be alone. Well, this is one of the best things we did. Instead of the mystery of not knowing when Cap would declare morning, we declared it first! Time to read, be still, and enjoy the AM a little.
to be continued...
Mom Part 2
Family Pics
We had a more than great Christmas with my family in Texas. First time all 4 kids were together in 4 years from what we remember. Adding 2 grandkids in the mix was fun. It was a crazy busy week since we had two parties at the house with family, but we all had a blast. I mean, Chick-fil-a nugget platter, homemade subs, Christmas crack, tons of Speciale's, homemade lasagna, italian sausage, bread, and a birthday cake for Jesus! Oh my, fun, fun as Cap would say!
One of my highlights was going shopping on the 26th with my mom hitting the after Christmas sells. This has been a tradition for us since I was younger, but the last year I was in to do it was in 2005. Every year I miss my mom on the 26th (more than the other days that is) but this year we had fun till I could not go any further! :) Cap even spent most of the morning with us too!
On to my mom's pics.
Another One of Those EC Updates
Quick Time Line:
4 weeks old: started infant potty training, started doing pee's in the potty immediately.....not hard to do with an infant who pee's all the time:)
5 months: doing lots of pee's in potty along with some, but not all poo's
7 months: all poo's in potty unless there was a random nap poop, lots of pee's but still lots of wet diapers
10 months: started to sign potty to us
12 months: started to notice we never had misses while out of the house. so we started full time undies except for sleeping. he began to only have 1 accident a day.
14.5 months: had our first clean and dry day!!!!
till 18 months: we did lots of traveling and moving and tons of different time zones. started not telling us, getting distracted easily and having misses. i started wondering what to do and getting a little frustrated, which didn't help.
19 months: i let it go and started to relax about it, he immediately got better and stopped having misses. later in the month he stopped peeing during naps. thank goodness!
21 months: started holding it for 3-4 hours. occasionally over 5 hours. does not like to poop in public AT ALL! he will hold his poop all day if he has to.
Cap just got over some sort of stomach bug. Throw up for 1 day and diarrhea for a week. I have always been glad we did infant potty training. I mean, I have hardly cleaned poop diapers since he was 7 months old. But this week with all the diarrhea I have been especially thankful! I have been so proud of Cap and how he has been telling us when he needs to go and hardly having any misses these days. We are still using a diaper at night. But a lot of the time he is barely wet. I am in no hurry for night time dryness because I don't want to get up in the night if he needs to go potty. Terrible I know! It will come when it comes though!
Not much of a Christmas post I know. I have been writing this over the last week or so just haven't had time to finish until now!
Merry Christmas and hope everyone is enjoying some down time!
Mom part 1
Random Updates
This is just getting embarrassing now. This whole no camera thing is really cramping my blogging. More than that though, I am getting pretty sad looking at our photos from the year and we hardly have any good ones. We have a bunch of phone and Ipad pictures but those just aren't very good compared to what I normally take. We had so many great pics last year, but I guess this year will be a little different. I am starting to get pretty determined about finding a new one. Hopefully soon!
We have a had a great past few weeks, but very busy. Busy is not always a bad thing, but I prefer a more simplified life. Cap and I haven't been home much lately except for nap time. We haven't been doing school for a few weeks now. I am totally okay with that, I just know we are hitting that point where it is time to spend time at home with just us.
We are in the process of buying a friend's window company. Bryce has started driving up to Denver a little over an hour from here for extra work. We are thankful for the work, we just wish things would get going more here locally. Please pray that our current door hangers are more fruitful than the last.
Cap is being quite the character lately. His personality comes out more everyday. He has been loving his snow boots lately. After taking his pj's off in the morning, he usually goes straight to his boots and puts them on. He walks around with one shoe on lately. Or one sock on. He ask for tractors EVERYDAY. Seriously, ALL the time! Any kind of work type truck will do for him. Yesterday we got to see a train pulling tons of work trucks on its load. It was actually pretty neat. I have never seen that before.
Cap thinks we are super parents. He thinks if he ask nicely that I can just pull a tractor out of thin air. Or a balloon out of thin air. He can get kind of upset at times that we aren't as super as he thinks:)
A couple of cute things he said last week:
1. He was in his rubbermaid in the shower taking a bath, when some water randomly dropped out of the shower head. He yelled, "Rain!!! Jesus!!!". Cap knows Jesus makes the rain and so he got really stoked about the rain in the shower.
2. The rain in the shower led to a talk about all the things Jesus makes. We made a big list of things he knows and he was really listening to it all. The next morning I put him in a shirt that I had made him. I asked him, "Do you know who made your shirt?" He smiled and yelled, "Jesus!".
He is a cute mess. I am so thankful he is healthy and feeling good. He has a very different personality when he doesn't.
Thanksgiving was awesome. I have zero pictures of the day, but we had such a good time with family and friends. We had a random group of people all connected in one way or another with no family near by, so we had a Thanksgiving all together. Sometimes when you get 15 people, some never meeting before, it can be awkward. But it wasn't at all. Many laughs and stories that day, and bunches of yummy food.
We will be in Texas for Christmas this year. We haven't been their since 2009. We are looking forward to it, and I am excited about the drive. I miss road trips! Bryce and I have always had so much fun driving across country.
I really love the church we go to. Great teaching. Amazing music. Good community.
Beautiful weather here. We have had random really cold days followed by high 60's which is warm here. I can easily wear shorts in the sun when it is high 60's which I couldn't in NC. Oh, and found out we have 360 days of sun a year!!! That means only 5 days a year does the sun not come out at all during the day. Crazy! I could have 5 days of clouds in 1 week in other places I have lived. For someone who really needs sun, this was a cherry on the top for me. Even on snowy days, the chances are high the sun is going to come out.
We bought a Christmas tree. It was looking likely that we would have one this year, but I kind of got sad about the whole deal. I really like having Christmas decorations out. We had to get rid of most of our when we moved but kept a few that we still really liked and meant something to us. Well, it took all of 5 minutes to put them out around the house. I got sad. Then tried to figure out the cost of a tree and if we could afford one. I found one for $20. And found a tree stand at thrift store for $2.50 so we went for it. So, I felt good about our purchase and love having the tree in the living room.
Okay...off to play with playdough or something crafty.
Well, 5 hours later. No playdough. Instead we went to the park and had tons of fun. I took the camera because I am for some reason extremely sentimental about the pants he is wearing in the pictures. They no longer fit, and I retired them last night. I got them out of the dirty clothes hamper and decided we must take some pics. My mom bought him those pants when he turned 1 and for some reason I am just sad they don't fit........good bye green pants. See you again next round I am guessing....
20 months
wrote on the 13th but somehow never posted it:(
I am not sure what has me posting Cap's last 3 month updates, but there just seems to be stuff I want to remember about these days. I think the biggest part of his growing this month has been his speech and language. I started "officially" homeschooling Cap a month ago. For now we have just started with reading, but that whole subject is for a post of its own. His vocabulary grew abundantly over just the first weekend of starting our reading. A lot of his words that he was already saying, he was really only saying them partially. Examples: Papa was Pa, Grammi was Mi, Nonna was Na, and so on.
He also started using two words at a time such as "goat cheese or pine needle". Now he is using two words all the time and sometimes more though very broken of course. Example: Pizza. Please. Papa's. House. It is pretty cute. Here are some other things to note about the month.
- loves to read books, but doesn't like to look at books by himself
- started to be very interested in puzzles. we only have two, but he like them a lot.
- will lay his head back in water on his own which is huge. since we started putting him in water at 2 months he has resisted and fought on having to lay back to get his head wet.
- funny/ frustrating eater. one day loves spaghetti, then next day won't touch it.
- loves to rock climb, which isn't necessarily what you might think rock climbing might be:) but on occasion it is
- still loves balls and now is learning what all the names are to the different balls. his favorite right now seems to be basketball.
- starting to have more dry naps, but hasn't been good about telling us he needs to go potty, we just have been taking him
- goes pee less times a day than i do i think. he will hold it for 2-3 hours. we have entered a new stage of not wanting to stop what we are doing to go pee.
- doesn't want to go in public restrooms anymore:( we pee outside a lot!
- knows his colors, purple, blue, green, black, brown, yellow, orange, pink, and white
- getting the idea of numbers and counting, but just the "idea" of it
- still wants to help with whatever it is we are doing. cooking, sewing, shaving, putting deodorant on, etc.
- says "get you" when he wants you to chase him which is because we say i'm going to get you:)
- says "help me" when he want to help you
- same size but we don't have to roll all his pants up anymore
- still sleeps 7-7 with sometimes sleeping in a little longer and takes a 1.5 to 3 hour nap in the afternoon.
- we had a couple of weeks where he wasn't taking a nap about every other day. i was kind of starting to freak out, but we are over that phase thank goodness! that was rough!
- really into mandarins right now. will eat 2-3 in a row
- said thank you with words!!!! he always signs it, but he finally said it!
I think that about sums it up. There is always so much more, but you can't document everything!
Heart My Family
Lets be honest, when dad is home for a whole day with no work, after a great hard work week, well, it is just going to be a good day! Lots of fun to be had. Not to mention, a day of adult conversation. I love days like this.
We woke up and had breakfast. Then we all cleaned house. We were done by 9:30 I think, so then we went out to get some groceries and run around town. Came home Cap napped. I sewed. Bryce woodworked. The boy woke up. Then the baking began. Cap was really wanting to help bake this morning. He was walking around with the wisp saying chocolate chips:) So I asked if he wanted to help me bake some Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread. All he heard was chocolate so he said yes!
Cap like to taste every ingredient we put in the bowl. Flour. Salt. Baking Soda. Sugar. Yep. Everything. Then he says MmmmMmmm. Very cute. About 5% of the ingredients always make it back out of the bowl somehow.
But he loves to be involved in everything we do and wants to help the best way he knows how. Now is it helpful most of the time. Not at all. Quite counter productive most of the time. But this is what it is all about. Using everyday life to make teachable moments and being intentional teachers to our son. Does Cap 'really' clean the dishes with us, ha, no, but you better believe that he is going to find someone to bring his chair over to the sink so he can help us do whatever the heck he thinks we are doing with the sink full of water and bubbles.
Cooking and baking is just another great way to teach kids how to count, add, crack eggs, measure dry and wet ingredients, all the kinds of spices there are, etc. There are a lot of things Cap cannot do yet, but I think we underestimate what a 1 year old can do and also what he would love to be doing along side his parents contributing with the community. Instead of fighting his need for independence, which everyone has, we are helping him learn the skills towards independence which makes him feel like a champ, gives him confidence in himself, and makes him feel needed and part of what we are doing.
Anyways, all that to say, we had fun and got dirty!!! Oh then to wrap up our day, Bryce picked up pizza (you have no idea how many times I have had pizza this week! and it was my suggestion!!!), we ate some pumpkin bread (Cap wasn't a fan, may be he had too much of the dough), jumped off the couch 54 times and did 21 front rolls off of it, and got ready for bed. Good day.
Enjoy,
