A little bit of this and that...

Well, the time seems to be speeding up now that we head into the holiday season. For some reason this time of year always flies by and I guess it's because it's such a busy time with three big holidays in it, three months in a row (I guess 4 if you count Halloween, which isn't really a holiday but IS an event so I guess it counts!). I have always loved, loved, LOVED this time of year and now that I have kids, it's no different. I think now I have more reason to love it because I get to start family traditions for our holidays and watch my children learn to love them as much as I do.

This is my first fall and holiday season where I haven't been working and I have to say it does have a different feel to it. I think I feel less in tune with the holidays since I'm not at work hearing about it from my students and other teachers. This was always the time of year that teachers get excited about all the holiday time off we would be getting. We would chat anxiously about what we would be doing for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years and the kids would be talking about their exciting plans for the time off as well. Now I'm home with my girls and not really talking about it as much.

And that is probably why Thanksgiving snuck up on me so quickly this year! I can't believe it's this week already! I'm looking forward to spending this Thanksgiving here in town with my parents and grandparents (on my mom's side). We originally had plans to go a couple hours out of town to spend the day with Waylon's aunt and uncle but we realized we simply couldn't afford the gas we would spend to drive over there. We are on a super tight budget (and I'm not just saying that - I literally don't drive anywhere unless I HAVE to!) and that trip would have taken all our gas money for the week. In the end, it's going to work out well since Waylon has to be at work at 5 am Friday, which means leaving here by 4:15 am and will probably work until 8 or 9 that night, putting him back home by 10-ish or later. It's going to be a long day for him, but hopefully a very productive day so it's probably good that we won't spend Thursday driving for several hours with two loud children trapped in the car with us!

I'm feel like I'm finally starting to fall into a routine or way of living here at home with the two girls. I've struggled a lot with feeling like I had to get a certain amount of actual chores done each day for it to be a productive day. I'm over that now. I have been told by so many people to enjoy the time I have with them and that there will always be chores to do, so I'm going to do just that. I'm going to enjoy this time with my babies that one day will be gone and I won't be able to get back. I'll get to the dishes and laundry as I can and the rest (like dusting and washing curtains and all those non-essential chores) will just have to not get done right now. And I'm fine with that.

I have been cooking more although I'm still not doing very well with officially meal planning, which throws a wrench in grocery shopping when I'm not sure what to buy and makes it hard for me to save money when I'm buying random things and don't have a plan. This is something I DO need to work on because it's something that can actually save us money and help us tremendously right now.

I also have reached a point where I just can't sit back and not do something about my weight anymore. I was really motivated when I started WW but then I got off track one week and that was the end of it. Now I can't afford to renew the membership and it's hard for me to do without having that online assistance. I am newly motivated again though some I'm working out some doable plans for myself. Until my girls are older and can go to our rec center's child care, I'll have to accept the fact that I won't get to go to the gym to work out. Scheduling workout time around someone else's schedule to watch the kids is too stressful. I've downloaded some free workout videos from our "on demand" exercise channel and am going to start doing those workouts during the girl's nap time. I started today. It was an easy workout but it still got my heart rate pumping and made me breathless. It doesn't really take much these days for that...I'm also going to focus on portion control and just cutting back on my eating. I have horrible portion control and can eat very large amounts of food at once. My first goal is just to take what I would normally eat and cut it in half. That's still going to be a lot of food but will make a difference for me I believe. This is something I really want for myself and am tired of feeling unhappy about my body. This time I'm making it a matter of prayer also (funny how I never thought to do that before...ahem...).

So there is a quick little update on me cause I know you have been wondering how I personally was doing! *grin* Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving week!

P.S. I realize I should have written a "what I'm thankful for" post first, but that will come this week, hopefully, before Thursday or maybe ON Thursday!

7 Months!

Here we are at 7 months (on this coming Sunday, the 20th) and it just doesn't seem possible that my baby is already that old. Layla has been such a good baby, despite her recent refusal to sleep well at night. She is a pretty good-natured baby and has been really good lately when we have been out visiting other people's houses and in restaurants. She's a keeper, that's for sure!

At 7 months here are some things she is doing:

- She rolls over from back to front and front to back. She's been rolling over from back to front for a while but it took a little longer for her to roll back over once she got there. Now, she's all over the place in her bed! It's completely normal for me to put her down for her nap and check on her in 10 minutes and find her at the other end of the bed facing the opposite direction!

- She is starting to jabber a lot. Sounds like her first word might be "mama" because she actually makes that sound a lot! Brooklyn said "dada" first so it would be cool if Layla said "mama" first! :)

- She is definitely teething, but no teeth have come through yet. She wants to chew on everything and has also started chewing on her hands more often. Of course, lots of drool comes along with this stage!

- She eats solids twice a day now and usually eats every bite of what's in her bowl. Her two favorites right now (the only two I really give her so it's not like she chooses these over others, lol) are avocado and butternut squash. I give them both to her mixed with formula and a little baby oatmeal. She loves it! I'm going to try peas and carrots next and then maybe some yellow squash and zucchini. I want her really used to vegetables before I start doing fruit on a regular basis.

- She sits up completely unassisted with very few falls. If she falls over, it's usually because she was trying to get a toy that is out of her reach and falls reaching for it.

- She has started lunging forward from the sitting position to try to move. I think crawling is in the near future. She wants to be mobile so bad!

- She laughs and laughs at her sister. She loves Brooklyn! Anytime Brooklyn is in the room and I'm trying to feed her, I might as well give up because she would rather watch Brooklyn than eat any day of the week! Brooklyn still hasn't warmed up completely to Layla like I would like her to but I know it will happen eventually. She still struggles with jealousy and not wanting to share. Sometimes she complains in the car that Layla is looking at her (they face each other). Don't know when that's going to stop but I'm sure it won't last forever!

- She has moved to Brooklyn's old crib and Brooklyn has moved to her toddler bed. We are still working out the kinks of the sleeping situation. Layla always starts the night out in the crib. Some nights she doesn't wake until 4 or 5. Those are the good nights. At that point, she wants a bottle and I want to be warm in bed so I bring her to our bed and give her the bottle in there and let her fall back to sleep with us. On the bad nights, which is the majority of the time, she wakes at 1 or 2 am and I try to get her back to sleep without a bottle - sometimes it's successful and sometimes not. If she goes back to sleep then, she will most likely stay asleep until 4 or 5 and then wake up and we do our normal 4 or 5 am waking ritual. If she doesn't go back to sleep, again, the norm, I try to rock her and sing her back to sleep, which doesn't normally work, and then give up and bring her to our bed where she will sleep the rest of the night and probably get a bottle at that point and then again at 4 or 5 when she wakes again, for another bottle. Spare me the sleep-training lecture, please. I know the consequences of us bringing her to bed with us and of giving her a bottle in the middle of the night. I'm really doing the best I can right now with the energy I have!

- She is wearing 9 month clothes and some 12 month clothes. Keep in mind, these are used clothes that have been washed many times and have shrunk. Still, she is quite large. But I like my babies to be big so I'm ok with it!

Here are some pictures I've taken recently of her:

She's got some pretty blue/grey eyes!

Look at that blonde hair coming in!

I've finally been using my carrier more. It's been great! She loves it!

I also wanted to throw in some comparison pictures of Layla and Brooklyn at 7 months. A lot of you don't think they look as much alike as I do and I think you'll see why I think that if I put side-by-side pictures of them. So here you go:

So do you see the similarities? Some days I feel like I'm raising the same baby when I look at Layla. I love both my girls and I have such fond memories when I look back on Brooklyn's baby pictures and remember her as a baby. It makes me sad that I won't ever hold her as an infant again. But I get to kind of re-live that through Layla now since they look so much alike. So it's almost like Brooklyn's a baby again! Does that sound crazy?? Oh well, I say a lot of stuff that sounds crazy so I'm not going to sweat it! I hope you enjoyed the pictures. This took me forever to get all the pictures to line up right. I remember now why it takes me forever in between posts with pictures!

Useful Gifts and Simple Solutions

Look around your house, or if you don't want to do that, try to think of a gift that was given to you for your birthday or Christmas that you have literally used everyday or very frequently since receiving it.

Not much on that list? Yea, me neither. And it's not the fault of the gift giver. Every year, at my birthday and Christmas, I'm asked the dreaded question: "What do you want for your birthday/Christmas?"

I never know. Seriously, I have all year to come up with things I want for my birthday and Christmas, yet I can never seem to come up with anything when people ask me this question. So frustrating! Am I the only one who has this problem? Please don't say yes!

So, the other day as I contemplated this year's Christmas and the gifts I would be buying, I briefly thought back to last year to see if I could remember anything specific that I received. Uh, nope. It was really hard to remember. I know I got clothes from my mom (at least I think I did - I was pregnant so I'm assuming I got some maternity clothes?). Then it hit me. Waylon and I were low on money last year (hey, we still are this year!) so we went really low-key on our gifts to each other. No, really. I'm totally serious when I say LOW-key.

Case in point: my butter dish.

Isn't it so shiny and pretty? Yea, I think so too. I realized that this is the only Christmas gift I received last year that I have literally used every single day since I got it. It cost less than $3 and was a something I actually needed and will never grow out of. :) 

I know it seems strange to be writing a whole blog post about a butter dish, but it just struck me the other day how such a cheap, simple gift has come in so handy. It made me realize that I don't need to feel all this pressure to spend a lot of money on people for Christmas this year but to simply find something useful or meaningful for them. I would rather give them something like a butter dish if that's what they need and will use. (Not that I'm THAT cheap, but you know what I mean...)

My goal now is to find each person I'm giving a gift to this Christmas something useful that I know they will use. So if you're wanting a fun, frivolous gift for Christmas, you probably won't be getting it from me! What I give might not be the most exciting thing, but I hope you find yourself throughout the year thinking of me every time you use what I gave you and being thankful that you have it. 

And now just a few frivolous pictures of other things in my house that were either gifts given to me that I love or simple changes I've made that have helped things around here with organization (that were really simple fixes):

This is the lovely rice cooker I got for my birthday from my mother-in-law. I'm so excited about it and have wanted one for a long time! I have had horrible luck making rice in a regular pot so it has been avoided for the most part. Now I can cook perfect rice till my heart is content! I already made a batch of cilantro rice and it came out great! Thanks Mitzi!

This is what actually inspired me to hang my pots and pans on the wall. I got tired of having to dig for my strainer in my tupperware drawer. I make a lot of pasta so I decided to hang this right over my oven (well, not RIGHT over it. It's slightly to the left) so that it's easy to get to while cooking and I can quickly rinse it in the sink and hang it right back up. It's amazing how something so simple has made cooking so much easier!

Ahem...you'll have to excuse the disorder here but this thing has been awesome to have! I got it at Walmart for $15. It has a big pouch for mail (I use it for odd things that need taken care of that I don't want floating around the house. Right now there is a picture in it that needs a new frame because the old one fell off the wall and broke!). The smaller pouches are for keeping stamps and other things in that I use regularly. It also has handy hooks on the bottom where I hang my re-usable shopping bags and my purse. Make sure to hang this on big nails if you plan to hang purses on there. You want it to be able to hold all that weight!

I recently replaced my pretty useless end tables in the living room with just one small book shelf that used to be in Brooklyn's room. It wasn't doing anything in her room except collect dust (like my end tables were doing!) so I moved it to the living room and put it to use! The picture on the left shows you a full view of it and the picture on the right shows you what I have in my baskets. The top basket is for all our remotes (HALLELUJAH!) and the middle basket has diapers and wipes. The bottom basket doesn't have anything yet. I'm trying to decide if I want to put that group of books in there or if there's something else I want to keep there. On the bottom shelf you can barely see one of our surround sound speakers. I'm so much happier with this set up! It's useful and looks pretty decent too. The other side of the couch also has more room for me to store Layla's large items like her exersaucer and toy bucket. They don't stay out in the middle of the living room anymore. 

Now I just need to find something to put on top of the shelf next to the lamp (that we got at IKEA and LOVE! I have another one that we aren't using right now and need to find a place for it in the house. I love the warm glow it gives!)

So there you have some things that are making my house-keeping a little easier. Just don't look around too much because you'll find all the pesky things I still don't have under control...like laundry, sweeping, mopping, dusting, bathrooms and vacuuming and several other things!

Have you ever done something really simple that has made a HUGE difference in how something works in your house? What gift do you have that you have used over and over again? I need ideas!