Such a Slacker!

I feel awful ;) Mel from The Bubble... gave me this "Mom of the Year" award like weeks ago now...

The rules for the Mom of the Year award:
Admit one thing you feel awful about involving being a mom.

Get it off your shoulders. Once you've written it down, you are no longer allowed to feel bad. It's over with, it's in the past. Remember, you're a good mom!

I feel bad that sometimes I feel like I don't spend enough "quality" time with my children. While I am home with them most days (I work 2 half days a week) it seems like I'm always busy doing something, and not spending time playing with them or interacting with them. I somehow imagined things so differently before I had children. I figured that I would spend a lot more time just playing with them. And I also figured that I would be more involved with school stuff, but unfortunately we live too far from the school...


Remind yourself you are a good mom, list seven things you love about your kids, or that your kids love about you.

These are things to remind yourself everyday that you rock!

1. I love that my two little ones snuggle up together when they are sleeping.
2. I love how sweet baby girl is! One of her favorite things to do is wrap her arms around me and kiss me all over :) and sometimes she even pats my hair!
3. I love how observant little man is! He just simply amazes me sometimes!
4. I love that little man is talking so much these days. It's so interesting to see how he sees things and understands them. It's just so fascinating!
5. I love that my 12 year old daughter is so friendly, outgoing and nurturing. While I might complain about some of her tween habbits, she is really a great kid!
6. I just can't help but love every minute of little man's singing! He just loves to sing!!
7. Equally I just can't help but love it when baby girl shakes her booty!! She really gets into it!
   

Send this to five other Mom's of the year that deserve credit for being great moms and remind them that they are the best moms they can be!! Remember to send them a note that you've selected them, and add a link to the person that nominated you.

The Mama's I choose are:
MamaNeena
Aubrey
Becky
April
Pregger TJ

What a Week!!!

Ugh. I'm exhausted and just overwhelmed. This past week has been really rough.

Both of the little ones have been sick since last Monday or Tuesday. Baby girl got sick first. She threw up a few times, nothing of much concern, not running a fever or anything, but then the congestion kicked in and she was up ALL night for 2 nights. Congested so horribly that she was choking. Oh it was awful. But of course you aren't supposed to give them anything for it... we propped her up, took her in the bathroom with the shower going and rubbed her down with baby vicks... and she is finally starting to sound better today...

Then little man started with the vomiting on Thursday. And he was running a fever, a mild one of 100. He threw up everything for a couple of days. The real kicker for him was throwing up some 7up... after that I could not get him to drink anything! I tried absolutely everything. I have about 10 juice cups in my fridge full of everything from 3 different flavors of Gatorade, 2 different juices and 3 cups of pedialite... I even tried the pedialite popsicles. He took about 2 bites and said he didn't want it. I think the poor guy was afraid that if he drank something he would throw up again.

But unfortunately that meant that he was getting dehydrated. So we ended up having to force him to drink some pedialite. OMG. Thank God we don't have close neighbors because he pitched the biggest fit. My husband and I both had to hold him, and he was screaming like we were killing him or something. It was one of the worst experiences ever. And unfortunately he was taking the motrin in about the same manner: the first time making himself throw it back up. He will take tylenol fine, but will not take the motrin. Of course the tylenol was doing little for his fever... But now that he's doing better, I've given up on the Motrin.

Since the horrid experience of forcing him to drink, he's been drinking on his own. Phew! But after the 2 or so days of vomiting, he started in with the congestion... and a sore throat. We got those suckers for kids to help with sore throats, and of course he won't eat them... I swear we wasted probably about $100 on pedialite and suckers and medicines...

The amazing thing with little man's being sick: he is *still* using the potty!!!! The poor guy got up at 5:30am on Friday to go potty! But he was so sick he told me he didn't want the M&Ms :( you just know a kid is sick when they turn down candy!

And of course now that baby girl has been well enough to sleep through most of the night, little man has been up coughing several times the past couple of nights...

With all that going on, I had to fast and go in for the 3-hour glucose tolerance test on Friday... and I got the call this afternoon (ironically just after guiltily eating a brownie) that I do in fact have gestational diabetes. Which is pretty upsetting. I had to wait a while to call my husband and mom 'cause I didn't want to get upset on the phone. But luckily I don't have to take insulin. My Dr is going to try to control it through diet. But I have to start monitoring my blood glucose at home and stick to the diet.

The bad thing about that is that I just went yesterday and did all the grocery shopping for the next two weeks, and have hopefully enough money left for gas for the next two weeks... so I can't really go out and buy more food.

And of course the other major thing of concern is the Swine Flu! It's getting me a little freaked out. I was seriously almost thinking that my kids already had it -but they weren't running high fevers... But everyone around here has been sick and their kids have been sick. Its just scary. And the scariest thing about it is that I know my 12 year old does not wash her hands. I think the schools need to be talking to the kids. Funny how up until about 4th grade they line them up to wash hands when they come in from recess and before lunch, but then they assume that kids in 6th grade should know better. Um... not my 6th grader. I have to tell her every single night to wash her hands before dinner. If I don't tell her to, she won't do it. We had a long talk about it last night and I reminded her again this morning, but I just doubt it will do any good. If there are any confirmed cases in our state, we will probably keep her home.

Ugh. I just hope the rest of this week gets better :) For now, I seriously need to get caught up on dishes... with the 2 little ones being sick I haven't been able to do anything around the house.

Sugary Sweet Good News

Not.

This baby has a serious sweet tooth. So guess what I get to do? Go sit in the Dr's office for 3 hours doing the glucose tolerance test. Can you tell how excited I am??

Grrrrr

I guess I have no one to blame but myself. I have been bad. Very, very bad.

One thing a pregnant woman has very little control over (aside from her bladder!) is her appetite ;) My willpower is completely weak when it comes to food. Especially sweets with this pregnancy.

The funny thing is that a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I needed to get some healthy snacks for during the day. It seemed that I was snacking on cookies and anything else sweet I could get my hands on. I picked up some carrots and celery. And I've been doing better during the day. But its those middle of the nigh potty breaks... I wake up having to pee and starving. So I've been eating M&M's, cookies, Kit Kats, Easter candy... at midnight, 1:30am, 3am, 4:30am...

Any suggestions for healthy middle of the night snacks that wont wake up the house? That's the thing, those sweets are so easy to grab without any commotion. If I made some toast or something I would certainly wake my husband up...

What really sucks about this whole sweet tooth thing is that years ago I weighed almost 200 lbs! I had a natural sweet tooth back then. I gained the most weight while I was in college. It was so easy to eat a bag of tootsie rolls and oreos while studying... But then my first marriage ended up falling apart the week before finals during my first year of my MA program... As soon as school ended I decided that I needed to concentrate on myself and start eating healthy. I did a great job! I basically cut out as much sugar as humanly possible (its amazing what foods have added sugar!). I started eating tons of dairy: yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese, etc... and the pounds just flew off. Seriously, I was losing about 10 lbs every week or two. By just cutting out the sugar, I lost 70lbs within a few short months. I was down to a size 5 for the first time in my life. I was wearing a size 12 in Jr. High...

Then I got pregnant for the first time. I had a little sweet tooth that time (nothing compared to this time!). I limited myself as best I could though. I still had that habit of avoiding sugar. I ended up gaining about 60lbs with that pregnancy! And then really only lost about 30lbs by the time I got pregnant with baby girl. Luckily, I didn't gain much weight with her and just a few weeks after her birth I was back to where I was before I got pregnant with her.

So this time? I've been gaining lots of weight and eating tons of sugar!!! So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't pass the 1 hour glucose test... If I would have been smarter, I would have eased back on the sugar the week before the test. But just try to tell a pregnant lady that she can't have those cookies! ;)

I just really hope that I don't have gestational diabetes! Since I got the call from the Dr's office, I went out and got diet pop and have only slipped up once... last night one of the times I got up to pee I just couldn't help myself. I was starving!! And I didn't eat as much candy as I usually do... I only grabbed 2 mini Kit-Kats instead of my usual 3...

So in I go tomorrow to sit and have blood drawn for 3 hours!! Yuck! The awful thing is that I have to fast for 8 hours prior, and then can't eat anything until the test is over!! If I don't eat by 8:30, 9am at the very latest I get all vomity. Its going to be a rough morning.

The best toy in the yard?

The dog dish.

Why do I bother buying yard toys? I should just buy a dog dish for the kids to play with. Of course then they wouldn't want to play with it - they would find something else they shouldn't be playing with to be completely obssessed with. Grrr. But I guess that's kids for ya! They just play outside the same way they play inside - with everything BUT their toys.

I should just be glad its been decent enough outside to go out and play. Sure beats hanging out bored in the house all day. Of course I'm never bored, but the kids have been going stir-crazy and itching to get out and do something for the past couple of months.

Updates Schmupdates...

You guys are absolutely awesome! You all have such great advice! Its at times like this I'm so glad to have such great cyber-friends :) It goes a long way towards making up for not having any "uncyber" friends ;)
You all had really great suggestions for the whole potty/too much candy issue! If I would have known that the potty training was going to be so successful I would have started out with just little bits of candy from the get-go. So what I did was went out and bought a plastic see-through jar, got some paint and painted on it "Little Man's Big Boy Jar." And inside: I got those little snack baggies and put about 7 M&Ms in each one, and also on each one I wrote a little note like "Great Job," "Awesome," "What a big boy" etc... and he gets those when he pees, and I put a few Kit-Kats in there too for when he goes #2! He loves it and is back to doing pretty well! And has actually pooped in the potty once! So that is going well :)
And I am so glad to hear that your children have similar responsiblities and chores. We have never been ones for an allowance, but I'm guessing that if we offer an allowance for doing her chores, Tween will probably become more responsible and less attitudinal about her chores :)