From Bad to Worse... to Worser??

Okay, I'm not sure if worser is a word, but I've decided to make it one.  If you read my last post you'll know that there isn't a whole lot of sleep happening in my house.  Most days I can get up from a loooong night and somehow function as if I'd had enough sleep, but other days I drag.  On Monday morning after being up with a coughing baby for 3 hours, I was having a hard time functioning.  I was foggy, baby M was cranky, and the impulsive neurons in 2 year old B's brain were firing at full speed (I don't know if that's a real thing, but it makes me feel better to give a scientific explanation to the reason why 2 year old B is only wearing tennis shoes and a soft cap while wildly running around the house yelling, "bare bum Baya, you better watch out!" while I am trying to catch her so I can get her dressed and in the car so I can make it to work on time - ah).

On this morning, I somehow managed to get all 3 of us dressed, fed, had my 4 + bags packed and ready to load in the car for the day, and I just needed to run downstairs to throw some dirty towels in the wash.  I grabbed the towels and headed downstairs and if you were a fly on the wall in my house, you would have heard the following series of sounds as I stepped off the bottom step: "squish squish squish, splash SPLASH, "oh @#$%!"

Worser.

It turns out that way far down in the pipes a root worked its way in and has been collecting all kinds of fun things that try to flow past it and then one day it collected one too many things and blocked up the whole outflow pipe which caused a water explosion out of the toilet!  At the time though all I knew was there was a lot of water... I mean A LOT of water just pooling on and under the laminate floors, under the washer and dryer, around the water heater, and in the bathroom.  The water managed to seep its way into every crevice and under every piece of furniture it could.  Oh and the water even made its way into my newly organized office area.  I used all the towels in the house to try and soak it up and eventually had to give up because I needed to go to work.  This is where the best dad in the world comes into play and came over while I was at work to Shopvac up as much water as he could.  He said he quit after vacuuming up about 3 gallons of water! Although anyone who looked at that room would think it didn't look organized, it actually was.  There were just piles of things to go to goodwill scattered about and a bunch of Christmas lights that needed to be put away lining one of the walls.  But now, it looks like this...

Those towels piled up in the sink are from my frantic attempt to mop up all the water.

Oh and my newly organized office area looked like this for a few weeks...

But now it looks like this...

And the playroom we love to spend so much time in now looks like this...

Ugh!!

P.S.  To make matters even worser my nanny quit... by voicemail... with no notice so I was left scrambling to find childcare!

Geesh, rough week!!!

Baby M's calendar

I'm tired these days, oh so tired!  Since going back to work baby M has decided she needs extra cuddles at night, then she got sick, then I got sick, then 2 year old B got sick, then Nick got sick, and now that we're all sort of healthy, baby M has decided to practice her new rolling over and moving around skills in her crib in the middle of the night instead of sleeping.  And don't get me started on getting up with 2 year old B... that is its own set of issues!  Sleep isn't the only thing that I either haven't done or done very little of in the last 7 months, though. Since I'm tired, I get a free pass at being whiney and will provide you with a list of the things I have been missing out on lately:

1. Sleep!
2. What is a haircut?
3. And remind me again what a hair dryer does??
4. My teeth could definitely use a good clean and polish.
5. The closest thing I've had to a girls night in a while is drinking wine while watching Downton Abbey and The Mindy Project with Nick.
6. Exercise.

Okay, enough complaining, and really, who needs those things when you've got these girls to play with and snuggle everyday...
 

Well actually, a cute smile won't clean my teeth so maybe I do need to make it to the dentist.  

This blog post is actually about number 7 on my list of things that haven't really happened in the last 7 months - the baby book.  To be perfectly honest, I don't have a book for baby M... I never even ended up buying one for her.  What I did end up doing was a calendar.  I give all the credit for this idea to my friend Katie B. who told me her mom did this for her and her brother and sister.  When baby M was getting closer to arriving and I was thinking about a baby book for her, I came to the conclusion that I needed something easy and accessible to help me remember all of her milestones and development.  That's when I decided to keep a calendar by my bed.  I printed a monthly calendar from printfree.com for baby M's first year.  Here is what the February one looks like:

February 2013
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28
January 2013	Printfree.com      Printable Calendars					March 2013

I keep the calendar in my nightstand drawer and the plan was that when I would go to bed at night I would jot down baby M's milestones.  It turns out I don't remember to do it every night, but I manage once or twice a week to pull out the calendar and write down some notes.  I'll write things on specific days, like when she first smiled and laughed and rolled over, etc.  I also write notes for the week.  For example, last week I wrote across the whole week, "Rolling over in her sleep at night and doesn't like it!"  I keep track weekly of how many naps she's taking, when she has been going to bed, what she's been eating, and what her new developments are for the week.  I keep waiting to write, "started drinking from a bottle," but that hasn't happened yet!  This week I need to write that she loves it when I hold her and we chase 2 year old B around the house.  I've never heard her laugh so much as when we play chase!  

The calendar I use isn't super cute and looks really messy with all my notes written all over it.  I could have gone with a pretty notebook or planner, but it works for me and with this system I can write things down as I remember them and then someday I'd like to make a cute baby book that I can put all this info in.  I think if I didn't have the calendar by my bed I'd never remember to write anything down and since I can't remember things that happened an hour ago, I know I'd forget all those important milestones that happened during baby M's first year.  Thank you Connie and Katie for the great idea!!