Peeing on Trees and Other Nonsense

Me:

• School has been very stressful.  Our school finances are not in good shape due to Kaisch cutting 10 million dollars of our state funding over the next 4 years.  This means that we had to ask tax payers for money sooner than we anticipated.  (Don't even get me started on the way we fund public schools!)  They voted NO in November.  Very disheartening but also understandable.  I blame the district for not getting information to people to make informed decisions.  I also understand it's a tight economy.  I DON'T understand how the community thinks we can make do with less when we already are.  We have an excellent treasurer who has always planned ahead.  We've always been in the black.  Teachers are on a hard freeze for salaries (and trust me, we are NOT even close to the highest paid districts) and took a 5% increase in our health insurance.  We also forfieted an type of performance pay to save additional jobs.  The district cut 32 jobs this year and anticipate another 32 next year, even with a pass on the August levy.  I'm worried I won't have a job after next year.
• I'm trying to decide if I want a third baby.  With the potential to lose my job I don't know how that will affect our finances.  I also worry about how it will affect me physically because of my umbilical hernia.  It got much worse with Michael and I worry it wouldn't take the strain of a third baby weighing on it.  I also worry that I couldn't handle any more loss.  Would another miscarriage be it?  Could I keep trying?  In my heart I still think I want a third baby.  Even if it IS a boy.  :D  Mark Simon Erdahl has a very nice ring to it.
• Counting the days til summer vacation and our family trip to Florida.  I can't WAIT to do something FUN.  It's sucked so much at work that it carries over to home.  I need some time away.  As Bill Murray said in What About Bob?, I want to be on vacation...from my problems!!!!
• I'm reading the Fifty Shades trilogy.  They're HOT.  And slightly overwhelming...this coming from someone who has read MANY a romance novel.  Some people are calling them porn.  I'd disagree and say they're "erotica"....which is just a PC term for porn.  HAHA.

Kendall:

• After numerous tests it has been determined that he is allergic to THE WORLD.  Not much we can do short of allergy shots and medication....oh and ripping out all of the carpet in our house and putting in hard wood to reduce dust and dog hair.  :)
• Work has been good.  He's been seeing a good number of patients and we may FINALLY see a performance bonus for the first quarter of 2012!  I'm finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel to at least that portion of our debt and hopefully a way to settle up some on the med school debt we're still paying off!

Max:

• Kendall has been telling Max for several weeks now that on our road trip to Florida in 3 weeks he will have to pee on trees on the side of the road when he has to go to the bathroom. That there will be no time for stops along the way. Max is now fascinated every time we get in the car and travel on the highway. He points out trees and asks if we can pull over and let him pee on them. We get home yesterday from strawberry picking and Max says, "I want to pee on a tree!" He then drops his shorts and starts waddling around the front yard with his "parts" hanging out. I about died and started laughing. I told Kendall he was going to have to indulge him and show him how to do it in the backyard. So he took him to a tree and told him how to pee standing. It was a HUGE hit. God help me......
• Max is also waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Which is great because it means we won't be putting diapers on him at all very soon. But two nights ago he came TEARING into our room screaming, "I've gotta go pee!!!!" Which then caused me to shoot up out of the bed and spend the rest of the night dreaming that he was in our room watching us sleep! LOL! We had a talk about how he needed to come in more quietly and not scare Mommy and Daddy. This morning he came in at 5:20 and very quietly went into our bathroom and turned on the light and then quickly dimmed it ("So I wouldn't wake up Mommy.") and then had trouble getting his diaper off. LOL! The joys of a 3 year old.
• Avengers CRAZY.  We have all of the masks and weapons and what not.  T-shirts galore.  It's adorable.  Some day he will hate the world and be anti-everything as a teenager and I will be able to look back at the video and pictures of him re-enacting Avengers fight sequences and smile fondly.
• One of his newest entertainments is to make up his own stories and adventures and tell them to us.  Sometimes they're about us, sometimes a favorite cartoon character.  He also likes to sing the wrong words to songs and see if we notice.  What a cutie!
• Still loving his little brother.  Thank God. 

Mike:

• Since I've been a neglectful blogger a lot has changed in almost 6 months.  He can now crawl, and babble and eat baby food. He's always eating table foods.
• Babble entails mama, dada, momomo (more) and baba (no clue what this means)
• He already has a sense of humor.  Sometimes he'll put his mouth on my arm or my leg and make farting noises and then look and me and laugh and laugh.  I LOVE his smile.  He scrunches up his little nose and opens his mouth a little and makes this adorable little eh eh eh noise. 
• The crawling has been more of a challenge this time around because now all of Max's unsafe toys are within reach.  We now have pointy objects and sharp corners that we didn't have before.
• Still loving his big brother. Thank God.
  
  
  

 

Life is Too Busy

I was such a diligent blogger when Max was a baby and already Mike is suffering the effects of a house with two children.

My transition back to work was no where near as smooth this time around. I returned to work on Halloween. I was not ready. Mike was only 10 weeks old, such a drastic difference from Max who was 16 weeks old. And then I only worked for 7 weeks and spent the next three months at home again. This time around I got a brief two weeks for winter break and was back to the grind again in January. Fortunately Mike did not have colic and is an overall good-natured baby.

So I figured I'd do an update here for each of the family. We'll go from youngest to oldest. :D

Mike

• He can roll over from his back to his front in both directions with relative ease. He does not understand how to roll onto his back again. I've been told that this is unusual for a baby to master back to front first. Both of my boys did this though.
• He has found his toes. And he has also found that he is flexible enough to put them into his mouth. This provides hours of entertainment for him as well as big brother who thinks the concept of eating "toe jam" is HILARIOUS.
• He has been babbling up a baby talk storm. He has said the words "daddy" and "hi" in that babble and Kendall assures me that he's REALLY saying daddy. I'm not buying it. 24 weeks is a little too young for him to be using words.
• We've been having a problem with baby cereal. For a good stretch of time Mike was doing just fine with his twice a day cereal. Then we started adding formula to his diet (I'm just not producing enough now that I'm back to work and pumping) and suddenly he was projectile vomiting the cereal. We've started making some changes and seem to have him back on it at least once a day.
• Tried peas. He hated them. Max loved them. Just goes to show you that all babies really ARE different. May try green beans this week. Kendall thinks we may have to bribe him with fruits first. I know, a big no-no. We'll see.
• Drooling/teething like crazy
• Smiles a LOT. Such a happy little guy. Makes me feel good when I go get him.
• Total mama's boy right now. I hold him and he calms almost immediately. Also makes me feel good. :)
• Not sleeping through the night. Every 3 hours he's up to eat. UGH. So not what we had with Max.

Max

• Obsessed with his "wiener" and the wieners of all other people, animals and super heros. He likes to point out the anatomy of just about anything he can. While it's funny in private (no pun intended!) it's not so great when he shouts about it in public.
• Potty training, oh how I loathe thee. At home we can't get him to do anything regularly. He's telling us he has to pee when he wakes up in the morning and right before bed. Any other time he just does it in the diaper or Pull-Up. Poop is getting better. He gets a reward for poop now. He's always so proud of what he plops in the toilet. I'm not pushing him though. He'll do it when he's ready. If there's one thing I've learned, you can't rush potty training. They'll do it when they're ready, boy or girl.
• He still loves horses and has branched out into all zoo animals. He will set all of them up together along with a set of dinosaurs and some Hot Wheels. His imagination astounds me.
• Recently drew his first "family" picture. With actual stick figures. It was adorable. He even included Grandma and Charlie. It was great. I saved it. :D
• Max really is a great big brother. I have to give him credit. He's barely 3 and he has incredible patience and incredible love for his little brother. I'm amazed at his adoration for Mike. He plays games with him, comforts him when he cried and shares his toys with an ease I never could have imagined. And Mike loves him as well. It's so wonderful to see my baby's face light up at the sight of his big brother.
• He has a firm grasp now of letters and numbers. We practice them almost daily, whether it be with flash cards or just spotting words in the store or books or on his toys. Sometimes I forget that he's only 3.

Lisa

• Loving the new building we moved in to over winter break. So new and clean and technology that allows me to do so many new things.
• Hating many other aspects of my job right now. The district has to cut 14 million dollars over two years because of reduced funding from the state (thanks Kaisch!). On top of that the community voted no on the levy. I blame the district for dropping the ball and not sharing about the cuts from the state. We will go up on the ballot again in August. Hopefully with more information for the community. This, however, means there will be major staffing cuts. Some rumors say 20 teachers. Some say more. Because I don't have tenure (you have to have a masters degree and I don't) I am potentially at risk to get RIFed. I have seniority in the district, but not within my department.
• Still trying to decide if I REALLY want a third child. When I see Max and Mike play I think how great it would be to see them all grow up together. When I'm up at 1am feeding a baby, I think how OVER I am this whole baby phase. It's exhausting! Some people say 3 is no different that 2. Some people say the exact opposite. I still have a few months to decide but ultimately I'd like to make a decision one way or the other over the summer.
• I am really into reading dystopian novels right now. And I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and I am borrowing tons of library books. I love it! I don't ever have to remember to return the book. The Kindle does it for me. Very nice.

Kendall

• His health has been a roller coaster since the fall. Major breathing issues led him to go back on steroids in October and November. We switched docs and got some new ideas and recommendations and he has been doing a lot better and is off the steroids again. Still don't have any answers as to what is causing his breathing issues but hope to do some allergy testing soon.
• His job has been VERY busy. It's that time of year though. We're hoping to get a small bonus check from last year. This is the last year we will have to write a check to the other partners to pay off his portion of the practice. I am VERY excited at the idea of finally pulling in some extra cash at the end of 2013.
• I have been encouraging him to read more. So far I've gotten him to read two books in just December and January and I have a new one for him for February.
• I'm always amazed at how helpful of a husband Kendall is. He is a very hands-on dad. He loses his temper some times, but don't we all? And I'm just grateful that he's willing to take the boys with him sometimes and give me some alone time. Or that we trade off chores and if I make dinner I know he'll clean up. Parenting really is a partnership. I can't imagine doing it without him.

Whew! Okay, I'm done! :D