BRRRRRR

Well it's official winter is here.  We had snow on Thanksgiving and right now it's 28 degrees here in the miserable Midwest.  I'm cold!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We had a great day.  My mom's side of the family all met at my Aunt and Uncles house around 12.  Our first holiday without gramps was a little rough but we made it of course.  It was great to hang out with everyone all day.  I really <3 my family.

Marcus is going through a clothing/diaper's are optional phase.  It sucks!  Several times now I have gone to bed only to find him a) completely butt naked, b) no clothes but diaper still on, or c) playing in his own feces that is a now all over the place.  Toddlers are nasty!!!!!  I think  for Christmas I'm going to buy him one of those training seats that sits on the big toilet.  He has a real nice potty chair that makes noises, but honestly I think he's scared of it.  He knows when he has to pee/poop and will tell us but will not sit on the potty. *sigh*

Jaylin is doing great!  Counting down the days til Christmas and driving herself nuts trying to guess what her already wrapped gifts are.  Bhahaha I'm an evil mama.

Have a great day!

I hate this time of the year

Marcus is sick, AGAIN!  I swear it's been like a never ending battle the last 2 months.  Poor thing barely gets a week or two to re-coup before he is sick again.  The runny nose hasn't stopped in weeks, and his cough came back again yesterday.  We were up half the dang night coughing.  Some friends told me about giving him honey before bed to help with the coughing, so I'm gonna give that a try tonight.  Here's hoping!

Other then that the weekend was pretty uneventful, except I started my Christmas shopping and I'm about half way done.  WOOHOO!  Thursday we had conference with Jay's teacher and received her report card.  She did wonderful all of her grades were in the mid-upper 90's except for one, she got a 78% in social studies.  She doesn't care much for history, but no doubt she will be bringing it up.  I'm a very proud mama!

Wedding plans

Oh that's right after 11 years together Orlando and I are tying the knot.  He "finally" proposed to me back in February.  I started right away looking into planning, setting a date, picking colors, choosing MOH and bridesmaids.  It's been 9 months since he put a ring on it and I have done nothing.  We still don't have a date, I kinda have colors and flowers picked out, no venue, I haven't been dress shopping, NADA!  Looks like he'll get that long engagement he wanted.  LOL

So if you have any wedding tips I would love to hear them, this will be a big DIY wedding since we are not very financially blessed.  I'm going with some shade of blue for the colors, and I love love love Calla Lilies.  I also want a spring May/June wedding.  I had set a date for this May but it's my little sisters high school graduation and she was unsure (and still is) of graduation date.  I would hate to have scheduled my wedding for the same weekend as her graduation.

Vanilla latte, and a pumpkin pie latte

A half a pot of regular coffee, a venti vanilla latte, then 2 hours later a tall pumpkin pie latte this is what it has taken to wake me up today.  The kids are great!  M is finally getting over his cold, coughing is no longer leading to vomiting and no sleep, and he is eating again!  Of course now Jay has a runny nose, and my throat feels like crap.  Such is life.  Tomorrow is a half day for Jay and our conference with her teacher is at 3.  Jaylin is a very smart little girl (and no I'm not just saying that because I'm her mom), she always has amazing grades and her teachers all love her so I'm excited as always for her conference.  Friday she is off school, so she will be spending the day with her bff, then when I get off work both girls will stay at my house.  Her bff's mom is going out and I'm keeping her daughter.  Fun times, I've always enjoyed having kids over.

A different post

The kids are fine and doing nothing different so I thought maybe a different kind of post was in order today.  Let's talk about parenting.  Parenting by far is one of the hardest jobs you will ever come across.  Every decision we make for or with our kids has an impact on their lives.  From breastfeeding/formula feeding, cloth diapers/disposable diapers, to vaccinate or not, to circumcise or not, to co-sleep or not, to let them cry it out or not, everything we do from day 1 of their little lives has an impact.  Now everyone has their own personal opinions on all the things I mentioned above, and that's ok, that is exactly what makes the world go round.  All I ask of every parent in this world is to take the time and make an effort to know exactly why you are making the decision you are.  Hopefully you'll have a better answer then because so and so did it and their kid is fine. :-)

My parenting: When I had Jaylin I was 19 years old.  I co-slept a little for the first month or so, did not breastfeed, and didn't sleep train til close to 9 months and it was 1 night.  She was fully vaccinated from day 1, and I honestly never read a book about parenting in my life.  I was 28 when I had Marcus.  Lots of time, maturing and growing up had taken place between kid 1 and kid 2.  I am a completely different mother now then I was even 3 years ago.  I have made it my mission in life to be educated about things like vaccines, and food preservatives.  I guess it helps that M is an extremely "difficult different" child then Jay was.  Different in a good way of course.  M was breastfeed for about 7 weeks, co-slept for a good while, I wear him even now at 30lbs, and I would love to have some cloth diapers, but being as he is over 2 it would be stupid to buy some now.  When you know better, hopefully you do better.  More then likely a 3rd child is not in the cards for myself and I'm at peace with that.  However if I do have a 3rd child I can tell you a few things right now.  I will have a med free natural labor (maybe even at home), that child will not be circumcised or vaccinated (at least for a long time if at all) I will make it a goal to make sure that child is breastfeed for at least a year, and I will for sure be purchasing some cute little cloth diapers.  In fact I have a friend who was a store selling cloth diapers, slings, and much more.  If you don't know about Cloth and Carry check it out here.  

Weekend in review

Happy Monday!  I loathe Monday's!!!!!!  So Friday I get a phone call around 11am from my babysitter telling me M is pretty sick.  Can't breath, isn't eating, coughing constantly and it's making him vomit.  I left work to go get him and take him home.  The pedi's office told me I could give him some Mucinex for all the coughing/drainage.

So you know we still don't have a car, since some *&&%%*&* stole ours several months ago.  I hoped on the bus to go to Jay's school to borrow my friends car to get M from the sitters.  There isn't a bus close to my sitters house and I wasn't about to pay $30 for a cab, or walk with a sick kid.  So my friend was letting me borrow her car, she's been my lifesaver.  Anyway I get to school grab her keys and as I am walking away from the building I hear someone say Ma'am.  I turn around and it's one of the ladies from the office that I know pretty well.  I greeted her and she walked up beside me and said "Be careful walking to your car, we are going on lockdown, so hurry up and just be careful!"  I was like WTF?  I asked her what was going on and she just said again, walk quick and be careful!  As I was walking down to the car I passed a class of kids, walking back inside with their teacher.  As I passed them another teacher yelled outside to her that the school was on lockdown and there was an intruder alert.  The kids starting running inside.  I get in the car and pull off to get M.  I am FREAKING.THE.HELL.OUT!  I just left my baby girl and the school possibly had an intruder.  I just wanted my baby.  But at that point they weren't letting anyone in or out and I was stuck because I had to get my sick little boy and I didn't want to leave my baby girl.  UGH.  Anyway I get M and while I was at the sitters a friend from school called me to let me know that there was an attempted abduction from the playground but from what they knew it was a family issue.  Ok that calmed me a little bit but not a lot.  I knew Jay wasn't on the playground, but what if this crazy guy was roaming the halls with a gun or something.  People are crazy!!!!  My friend kept me updated.  They ended up being on complete lockdown for about 20 minutes, they stayed on lockdown for 90 minutes, but it wasn't a complete hiding lockdown the whole time, just no one in, no one out.  When I picked Jay up from school I found out that the whole story of the attempted abduction was a lie brought about by a 8th grader who got caught skipping school.  Thankfully the kids where never in any danger.  But I would love to get my hands on this 8th grader, the whole school for the first 20 minutes of lockdown was hiding in their classrooms.  HIDING!  My daughter was terrified as she hide under the coat rack in the back of her room for 20 minutes.  GRRRR

Saturday and Sunday went about the same, cleaning, cooking, and chilling.  We went no where and did nothing outside.  It was cold and dreary.  M is still a bit sick, runny nose, cough, and not eating much.  Here's hoping for a good week for all of us.

Randomness

TGIF!!!!! I love Friday's and payday Friday's are even better! Let's play catch up for a minute.

Halloween was fabulous! M was a monkey and Jay was prom queen. OMGosh a.dor.able! I ended up not using one of my dresses. My mom found a bridesmaid dress at the second hand store in her town for $5, and it was a womens size 4. All I had to do was pin the straps and clip the back a little and it fit like a glove. The both looked so cute and had an absolute blast! I had an MRI last week to see what is going on with all my back pain. Turns out I have 2 bugling discs. FUN! No wonder I've been in so much pain. Plan will be physical therapy and possibly steroid injections. Jay's conference is next week not this week. M is sick, again! We didn't get much sleep last night. Poor little man has so much congestion and mucous that he can't breath. Then he starts coughing and vomits up all this phlegm ewwwww. LOL

Not much in the way of plans for the weekend. It's supposed to get chilly this weekend and rainy. Grocery store today, most likely nothing all weekend. It's ok I enjoy "boring" weekends sometimes. I hope you all have a great Friday and blessed weekend!