Short and Simple

Weekly Happenings: This blog post is being written a little later in the day than I normally do because when I went to write it earlier, I discovered that someone accessed my blog and did all sorts of nonsense (a post telling me that I’d been hacked, random links for medication inserted into different posts, etc.). I was irate and worried, trying to figure out how on Earth we were going to fix it (thinking about editing each post to remove the links just hurt my brain). Luckily, Paul had backed it up fairly recently, so with some work, he was able to restore everything. Yeesh. Some people irritate me…at any rate, here’s my blog post for the week. This past week was relatively laid back. We didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary. I’m okay with that, since I’m still trying to find my groove with handling two kids during the day (Paul is a huge help in the evenings and overnight).

The Weekly Weather: Hot! For February, that is. There have been days where it’s been over 80 degrees, even. Though, we did have one or two random cooler days (in the 50s and 60s) thrown in (it wouldn’t be Texas if we didn’t, ha).

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy with his regular stuff. He also has helped Joseph get some practice in with his new bike. Oh, and he’s started on a small home improvement project: making a can sorter for all the canned goods we have in the pantry which makes it easier for us to cycle through the cans (we like to keep a lot on hand for food storage purposes, but we don’t want them going bad, so we make sure to cycle them through). I’ll post pictures of it when he’s all done. 🙂

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Mainly shuttling both kids around, getting stuff done during the week. I had forgotten how exhausting the “newborn” stage is. Luckily, I have a great support system. As I mentioned before, Paul has been a huge help and so has Joseph (he willingly is on “binky patrol”, which means making sure Abigail has her binky if she’s upset in the car or swing and he also throws away dirty diapers without complaint).

What Joseph’s Been Up To: School, homework, and playing around the house (and doting on his baby sister). He enjoys practicing riding his bike riding and having Pokémon battles with Paul.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s starting to coo a little bit here and there. She’s also started fighting sleep during parts of the day. Luckily she isn’t at the point where she makes herself overtired and crazy cranky. She’s a pretty chill baby, actually.

This Week in Pictures: I’ve found that my phone doesn’t get pulled out as often to snap pictures, haha. I did get a few, though (and Paul got a great one of Joseph on his bike).

There was a bit of a learning curve for him to figure out the pedal brakes, but he’s doing great!
All ready for church!
An example of her fighting the sleeps…she’ll fight getting the binky in her mouth at times, even. It’s almost as if she knows that sucking on the binky is what normally helps her fall asleep.
Checking out the stuff on the activity mat. She’s getting more alert each and every day.

 

Hello, February!

Weekly Happenings: The main thing that happened this past week was that Joseph received an award at school. The students at his school focus on eight different keys of excellence (or something like that). One of those keys is commitment, which is what Joseph’s teacher picked him for. Tuesday night was the assembly for the awards. It was new to us that the assembly happened at night, instead of during the day, but it was nice that our entire family could attend. Joseph was pretty excited to get his certificate and medal. Other than that, it was a pretty average week with a visit to the library to trade books and just hanging around the house.

The Weekly Weather: Mostly warm, but the past few days have been pretty chilly. It’s crazy how much it’s been flip-flopping. People on the Internet joke that Texas is trying to experience all of the seasons in one week, haha.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Mainly his main things: work and school. He did make a shirt for Joseph for the 100th day of school. Joseph was supposed to wear a shirt with 100 of something on it (a lot of the kids did eyeballs, stickers, etc.). Paul found a picture of 100 different Pokémon, printed it onto iron-on paper, and put it on a white shirt. Joseph was pretty stoked. It turned out well enough that Joseph will be able to wear it more than once, which is always a plus in my book. 🙂

What Sarah’s Been Up To: I have been mainly taking care of the tiny humans…but I did go to a Relief Society activity on Wednesday. Each person brought a brown bag with three things in it that best described them and then we had to try to guess which items belonged to which people. It was a lot of fun. I also had my six week post-partum check up and they did another glucose test to ensure I no longer have diabetes (sometimes it doesn’t go away after pregnancy). I’ll find out in a couple of weeks what the results are, I believe. I left both kids at home with Paul during the testing since it was a two hour one. It was weird to be just by myself for that long. I’m glad he got some Daddy-Abigail time, though. I think I may have been monopolizing her a bit. When Joseph was born, Paul left for the Middle East so soon afterwards, I was solo with Joseph from almost the beginning of that first ten months. I think I’m sort of still in that mindset with Abigail, even though he’s home this time around. I need to be better about giving him time with her.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been enjoying life at school. He wears his medal from his award quite a bit around the house (though he will pretend that it’s a myriad of different things), which I think is pretty cute. He loved that this past week contained the 100th day of school because they got to do extra fun things at school. They also did some fun things with groundhogs since this past week also contained Groundhog’s Day. I really love the program that he’s in. He gets exposure to different subjects and learning, but they do a lot of fun things as well. It’s sort of how kindergarten used to be, which I think is really good for him to get to experience.

What Abigail’s Up To: She’s even more smiley than last week. I was holding her and I made a funny noise to see if I could get her attention. She looked very seriously at me and then cracked a huge grin. It makes my day when I get to see one of those, since they are so brief. She has also hit the six-week mark. It’s hard to believe that in a couple of weeks I’ll be taking her in for her two month check-up. Craziness!

This Week in Pictures:

Getting his certificate at the awards assembly.
Getting his medal. He was pretty excited.
Standing in front of the keys.
Sporting his 100 Pokémon shirt for the 100th day of school.
So chill…until she startles herself awake, that is…
Chilling on the activity mat.
I love these two!
Seeing that she’s totally asleep, I have no idea what she’s doing with her hands, but it made me laugh out loud…
Someone fell asleep while reading…
Best invention ever…zip up swaddle blanket!

Another Week in the Books

Weekly Happenings: Well, we made it another week! This past week was pretty average. Work, school, and home. Paul did take Friday off because on Saturday he was planning on attending PAX (a gaming convention here in town). Friday he did all of his Saturday stuff, including taking Joseph to get a haircut. Other than that, it was just a day-in-day-out type of week.

The Weekly Weather: Most of the week it was warm enough to not even need sweatshirts. The end of the week and the weekend was colder, but it’s supposed to get back up into the 70s before too long.

What Paul’s Been Up To: Mostly work, school, and Scouts. The other night, he had to call the sheriff because our neighbors decided to start fighting at one in the morning. Because it was a big group and they were yelling and actually physically fighting, Paul decided to call 911 instead of the non-emergency line. The sheriff deputies arrived in less than 10 minutes. There was one more burst of fighting after the deputies left, but not as bad as the first. We haven’t heard a peep out of them since then. Hopefully they learned to keep themselves calmer and not to disturb neighbors during the wee sma’s of the morning.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Basically keeping my two tiny humans alive and happy. I did manage to take both of them to the grocery store yesterday, all by myself, and nobody was too much worse the wear. I feel a small sense of accomplishment. 😉

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Mainly school and homelife. We did go and get him a bigger bike when we realized that his balance bike was way too small for him. Even though we would normally wait for his birthday or Christmas, both just passed, and we didn’t want him to have to wait that long (it is only January, after all).

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been focusing a bit better on faces and has been smiling more. It’s been a fun bit of progress with her.

This Week in Pictures:

She loves bath time!
The boys playing frisbee in the back yard.
Yes, it’s January…no, they aren’t freezing out there.
I love these two!
Sleeping in the swing.
I love when she grabs her hands like this!
Wide awake…
Riding his balance bike.
All bundled up to take brother to school (Thursday was pretty cold…the high was only in the 50s).
Which is bigger: the binky or the blossom?
New haircut! He wanted one where he could part his hair (a couple of his friends at school have similar haircuts).
He specifically asked if I could take a picture of him making a funny face.
PAX fun with friends (the kids and I stayed home to hold down the fort).
There were a lot of fun things to look at there.
There were also a lot of fun games to play.
A ton of fun for all!