Picture Update!

I have failed you miserably with picture updates. In fact today I went to upload a picture of an exercise bike for a friend who might take ours and I realized that I had pictures from AUSTRIA still on my camera. I had Christmas, all our snow pictures, Happy's birthday. I am really behind. My sincere apologies to my five readers.

Click the picture below and join the Sloth for a four month journey of pictures!

random pics fall 09 winter 10

Bedtime!

Big day today in the Sloth home. Demand and Happy are sleeping in the same room tonight. On Saturday we moved Happy's crib into Demands room but moved Demand out temporarily so Happy could get used to his new surroundings. Since he coincidentally started sleeping through the night at the end of last week step one was pretty uneventful. Demand was really excited to sleep in our closet for a couple of nights. After the first night she still liked the novelty of it but missed her "sheep room". So today after nap time I started getting the room ready to move Demand's big girl bed in. She's been sleeping on a mattress on the floor for months. The rest of the bed just sat at Sidekicks house while we waited for Demand to be old enough not to fall out of bed.

She's not old enough.

She insists on sleeping on the very edge of the bed. We find her in all kinds of half off, half on positions, but the time had come. She was in her friends room the other day who has a butterfly bedspread too. She keeps talking about getting a butterfly bed too.

So what started as me cleaning up the room to rearrange furniture led to an all out bedroom re-do. I got the genius idea to take everything out of the closet, purge what I could and then put the excess in our now spacious closet. I then put the low dresser in the closet and dug out the changing pad again. I was able to purge a number of things and I also made a fantastic find. I thought there were bags of clothes that were too small for Happy but it turns out they were his next sized clothes including two spring clothes. GOLD! How fantastic! With all the drawers now cleaned out I had plenty of space to put Happy's new wardrobe and with our clothes back in our own closet I had plenty of space to hang the kids dresses and dress clothes.

After dinner I was back to work. Mr. Sloth bathed Happy while Demand and I worked on the room. She helped me hang clothes and pick up under her mattress so I could give the carpet a much needed vacuum. After the bath, the room was reorganized, clean, and purged of clutter and just in time for the new bed. Mr. Sloth and Sidekick carried it over and I thankfully (with the help of St. Anthony) remembered where I had packed the hardware from four years ago. I then kicked Demand out of the room while I made her bed all pretty. I retrieved a pink and white flower embroidered twin blanket that my grandmother gave us as a wedding gift and switched her sheets our for pink and white ballerina sheets and recovered the pillow cases. As a finishing touch I covered the bottom of the bed with the pink side of the blanket my mom made her. Demand is SO excited about her new bed and unfortunately since she took nap today so was too excited and too awake. Bedtime wasn't as bad as it could have been, but hopefully it will get better over the next week or so.

Their room sure is cute though.

Treasure Hunt

I'm not going to lie, today wasn't my best day. Did I yell at the children? No. Was I grumpy? No. Just lazy, pure and simple. Bored out of my whit actually. How does a mother with a three year old and one year old get bored you ask? That's the thing. The kids were bored so they looked to me for entertainment only I was all out of ideas today. There's always things "I" could be doing but if the kids are bored it's all over.

So minimum cleaning was done today and no purging (so sad) was done today. I spent my time trying to entertain the little ones. I had very little imagination working for me today too. I tried a series of new toys and games none of them did well, that is until we decided to do a treasure hunt. I wrote down a series of clues for Demand, I read them of course, and then at the end there was a piece of candy. We must have done ten plus treasure hunts today, if not more. At one point she started doing her own I cannot describe how cute it was. She would scribble on pieces of paper and hide them and then pretend to read them with real clues. In her most adult voice she would ask something like "Where would you wash your hands?" And then proclaim "the bathroom", and run to find the clue. Mr. Sloth likes the game too because he can sit on the couch while Demand still has fun, and ideal situation for him.

That said, I have a funny story about this morning. Demand is getting really good at staying in her room in the morning and at naptime. This morning I woke up at 6:19am (Happy did a great job sleeping last night only waking up once and going back to sleep on his own) Before I could find the courage to get out of bed Mr. Sloth got up and in the shower before me. (Rats!) So I wondered downstairs, started the water for tea and started to read the Bible and work on my Bible Study for next week. As I sat at the dining room table I heard the pidder-patter of little feet and the Demand presented herself in the kitchen. Stopping at the stove she looked at me and said in a most serious adult voice, "Momma. It does NOT say 7 on my clock." How could I not laugh? "No, it doesn't." I said, "so you should go back to bed." Off she went.

Mr. Sloth thinks that she was cross that "I" was up before 7am. I can see the confusion as Mommy hasn't gotten out of bed before 7am in a few days.

I now have to make up for what today lost. This house is a mess.

Turkey Turkey

I thought I would fill you in on the turkey dinner in case you couldn't sleep last night wondering how it would all play out.

Well I did the math and in order for the turkey to be done on time I would have to put it in the oven by 1pm, but to play it safe I wanted it in by noon. So when Mr. Sloth was home for lunch at 11am I went next door to fetch my turkey from Sidekicks empty refrigerator. (I had already made four or five treks next door this morning through the snow in a jean skirt with no tights on in order to take out his garbage and recycling use the empty space in his bins. )

So I carry the 13 lbs turkey over to our house set it on the counter and start to open it up...and find that it's still frozen. I have to say that I wasn't disappointed I still had no idea how I was going to make a turkey dinner by 5pm and have us leave on time for CCD.

Our solution was a no brainer eat out after CCD like most Wednesday nights. Mr. Sloth is out hunting and gathering as we speak. (This pregnant lady wants Taco Bell.)

So, turkey this weekend! It works out for the best anyway. Mr. Sloth is going to grill the turkey on Saturday and Sunday he'll grill pulled pork (I'm drooling just thinking about it) Then next week we'll eat all the left overs.

Good thing I some left overs in the freezer for tomorrow!

Spring Fever

Today didn't start well and I actually felt rather sluggish all day but when I started adding up all I did it turns out I really got a lot done.

I tried to wake up at 6am but I went to bed with a headache and it only got worse as the night went on. At 7am Demand came in to let me know her clock said "7" and right on cue Happy perked up in his crib. It took all I could to get out bed and take the kids downstairs. I worked through the extreme pain to throw some food in front of the kids, take some Motrin, and start the coffee.

I laid on the couch waiting for the pain to stop while Demand joyfully ate her breakfast happy that we had milk again. By the time my coffee was ready I was able to be upright but it was still slow moving for about an hour..ok, maybe more. I don't recall actually doing things but by lunchtime everyone was dressed (not well but we were dressed). I had bathed, beds were made and laundry was started. Whenever the kids would play I would work on de-cluttering. I made great progress filtering through the filing cabinets and cleaning out my desks. I'd randomly grabs some clothes from my closet or dresser to either store away or give away and in unfortunate circumstances throw away.

Demand had class today but our car was in the shop (of course it is, we're broke that's when cars need repairs) so she got a ride from a friend (which she loved). With Demand gone for two hours I had more chances to be productive. However with Demand not napping today and Happy waking earlier than usual it was a long afternoon.

Around 4:45pm I realized that I no desire to eat lasagna for a third day so I made an executive decision to order pizza. Thankfully there are $10 pizza deals now so we only ended up paying $12. Mr. Sloth was pleased and I felt great about the decision. Everyone was happy.

After dinner the family headed to a local grocery store for a fantastic deal. Last week they had a deal that if you bought 6 boxes of cereal you'd get $10 off at the register and a coupon for milk and eggs. It was a great deal! This week the deal was if you bought a certain ham you got a turkey breast, breakfast sausage and eggs free! Fantastico!

Mr. Sloth picked up pork for this weekend, we got the 'meal deal, and our milk coupon was enough for two gallons and the egg coupon was enough for 1 1/2 dozen. So we got, pork, ham, turkey, sausage, 2 1/2 cartons of eggs and two gallons of milk for only $22! It felt great. So now we have a thawed turkey next door waiting to be cooked tomorrow. We have another full turkey, a ham, a turkey breast and pork shoulder in the freezer. It's nice to have food in the freezer.

I haven't really worked out the details about making a Turkey dinner tomorrow when we have to be at CCD by 6:15pm. I'll save those details for the morning.

Rough Start

I've tried starting a new system where the kids can't get up until 7am. Months ago my sister in law showed me how she gets her three year old to nap, etc so I tried their system with Demand. She has a digital clock in her room and when the first number says "7" she can leave her room. It's been working pretty well. She usually comes in our room after 6am but if we tell her to go back to her room until 7am she agrees. Happy has to stay in his crib, happy or not. He's starting to be ok with it though...that is until today.

Our children tend to wake up at exactly the same time. 6am. My goal is wake up at 6am and have an hour to myself to shower, dress, and pray (and start coffee) before the kiddos get up and start demanding things. Today Happy woke up at 6am and when I rolled over to get Mr. Sloths opinion I noticed he was gone and then I heard the garage door. Good for him! I thought, he's going to the gym. Then I heard a rustling in our room. I turned expecting Demand to be looking at me and found Mr. Sloth in the doorway. His shoes were in "Happy's" room and Happy was awake. So I started to get up while Mr. Sloth waited for Happy to fall back asleep. While I was downstairs attempting to pray/wake up I started to hear the distinct sound of pacing. I headed upstairs to see Demand leaving our room (not a good sign). I walked in to find Mr. Sloth walking Happy back to sleep.

The gig was up.

At an early 6:30am we all headed downstairs. It turns out Mr. Sloth tried to make his move only to find Happy awake and the gym shoes not in the closet. So Mr. Sloth scratched going to the gym and jumped in the shower. Meanwhile I started working on breakfast earlier than planned. It didn't help that Mr. Sloth had dumped the left over coffee that I thought was waiting for me and we were all out of milk, butter, and eggs. Breakfast,was a challenge. I finally persuaded the children to eat mini bagels with cream cheese. They were reluctant at first but ended up eating four of them combined all day.

From that point on Happy was a crabby pants. Demand was even saying it before I was. If I left his side, he fussed, if Demand played with his toy he fussed. Nothing seemed to please him. He ended up taking a random nap from 10:45-11:30am which only led to a much difficult nap time. Demand however took the cake at nap time. It took over and hour to get Happy to sleep once I heard him wake up I came upstairs to find Demand playing in the nude with my bedroom door open (giving me the hint that she had woke him). Plus I had left a tap dispenser in her reach and she severely taped one of her toys.

Argh!

That said I did manage to get a lot of purging and cleaning done today. I spent a lot of time coming up with creative snacks and meals. Tonight was grocery night so we just had to make it through the day. At the end of the day we all had full bellies, the kids, exhausted went to sleep easily, and after getting groceries for the week I even had some time at adoration.

Moral of the story. We survived today and for tomorrow have more ammunition....milk, snacks, and coffee!

Happy Birthday, Happy!

At 23lbs 31 1/2 inches and 12 months old, its HAPPY!

Saturday was Happy's 1st birthday. Eleven months ago I decided to have a Penguin Party for his 1st birthday party little did I know he would actually love penguins! I tried to keep things pretty simple and definitely inexpensive. Demand had a blast helping me plan and decorate and Happy was even more excited than I thought he would be. He watched in awe as I started hanging snowflakes from the ceiling. He got excited just seeing the picture of his cake. I hadn't even made it yet!

I tried to hold back on the crazy since Mr. Sloth loathes "party mode Lazywife". To his luck he had a political event almost all day leaving me with the children, a house to clean and food to make. Now I don't want to sound like a martyr because it wasn't bad actually. Sidekick helped out a lot. He ran to the store last minute for me, helped with the kids and made the sandwiches. Happy was on a weird schedule that day and slept from noon until 1pm when he usually doesn't go down for a nap until 1:30pm or so. So when Mr. Sloth came home around 2pm I had him load the kids up in the car so they could take a nap before the party. That gave me a little over an hour to finish cleaning the house and get ready myself.

Mr. Sloths parents showed up exactly at 4pm only to find the party boy gone. They only had a few minutes but Mr. Sloth didn't get home until right before they left. At least they got to see him for a few minutes though. The rest of the guests filed in and the party started. It was fun. Other than Demand and Happy there was an almost two year old and a seven month old making things even more fun.

Around 5pm it was cake time. We thought for sure Happy would give us a good show. We sang a sad version of "Happy Birthday" and gave the diapered-only boy his penguin cake. First he talked to it. Then he pointed at it and talked some more. (Boring!) You'll see the rest in the video.

Gift opening was fun. He loved his first gift of penguin bowling and from then on out he was distracted by all the chaos but having a blast all the same. He loves all his toys, all the kids did. It was a fun party and great to celebrate our little man.