You'll Always Be My Baby

AAAAGGGHHH. This has been one very stressful week. Braeden has totally and completely messed up his sleeping schedule. He is ok sleeping though the night, but he has decided that naps during the day are no longer necessary.
I've had them both on an amazing schedule for the past 3 weeks or so, where they will both take a nap at the same time and nap for a good hour or two.
This week - all of that has been tossed out the window. For some reason Braeden just refuses. I'm not sure what's going on. Is it the week of the full moon? We discussed that in Sunday School this week. Many people think that the full moon really does play into how children act and whether they sleep well.
I don't know what it is at this point - but it needs to get fixed fast. Mommy needs a break! :)

At nighttime, when getting Braeden to sleep I will always hold him and sing him songs until he falls asleep. Well, this week also has been different during this routine. He wants to crawl out of my arms and then fall asleep on the floor. I imagine that this probably means that it is time to graduate to the toddler bed with him. BUT this really big step means that Mommy won't have any babies anymore. And that in itself makes me ball my eyes out.
Yes, I know. I am SOO happy and blessed that they are healthy and growing into beautiful children. But how do you deal with knowing that you can't hold them, rock them and cuddle them for the rest of their lives, like you've been able to do for these few precious months?
I think the saying that your mom always said when you were growing up comes into play here, "I don't care how big you get, you'll always be my baby." You really don't understand it until you have your own babies. And I just have to remember to thank God everyday for each moment I have with them.
After getting Braeden to sleep tonight, Izzy pulled me into her room to show me this new thing she could do. Chris would start reading a page of her book and then she would finish "reading" it. He apparently has read some of the books so many times that she has started memorizing them! I think this is probably the first stage of reading for her, but it's so neat to see how much she has learned in just 3 years. AND the WORDS that she knows...my goodness. The girl amazes me every day.

Changes

Needless to say....I am exhausted!! It's been a very short month (to me) since I last blogged.

I have literally lost 5 pounds. I know some of you would say, "what 5 pounds did you have to lose?!" I really did have 5 pounds I needed to lose. But, I think mostly it's that we aren't eating out nearly as much as we did while I was working. AND- I am chasing two toddlers around all day. My back hurts, my knees hurt, I have no fingernails left (because I wash my hands at least 30 times a day, and do dishes 3 times a day) and when I crawl into bed at night it takes 2 seconds for me to be snoring and drooling.

Here's a short synopsis of the last month:

We celebrated Izzy's 3rd birthday at Bouncin Kids in Morganton. It was a blast.

We've gotten to do a lot of trips to the park in the last 2 weeks because the weather has been so warm. This week not so much, it seems winter has finally hit (mid February)...blah.

Chris and I have really caught the house renovation bug.

It started with Izzy's bedroom. We had wanted forever to paint her walls and just give her room an upgrade. So we did - we painted the all wooden furniture white, painted the light pink walls yellow, got new curtains and it now looks completely different.

We cleaned out our downstairs den - it is now functional as a playroom/living area - which we have wanted to do forever. You may have seen my many posts on Facebook of items for sale. This is part of the cleaning out/downsizing/decluttering our lives thing we're trying to do.

It's so neat the things you will find when you start cleaning. At the risk of being called a hoarder, I want you to know that I have saved all of my Barbie furniture, Barbies/Barbie outfits and Dance recital costumes from my childhood. I had high hopes that one day my little girl would want to play with these things. Part of me wished that she would, but partly thought, well she'll probably want her own, "new" things. BUT this week, after naptime I decided to bring up 3 of the Barbie dolls and all of the Barbie furniture to see what Izzy thought. I got so excited breaking it all out and setting it up. It was amazing the memories that each piece brought back. It didn't help that we had just watched Toy Story 3 for the first time last week. So with each piece I was silently apologizing to it, for it's many years being stoed away and unused.

I really don't know why I was worried about it. She loved them. Of course she loved them - she's my child - she loves Barbies, baby dolls and dressing up. (For now, that is - hopefully for a while, but we'll see).

Yes, I caught you Braeden. He loved it just as much as Izzy did. I think they ended up playing with these for close to an hour. Which anything longer than 10 minutes in this household is a pretty big deal.

So maybe next week we'll break out the rest of the barbies or even the dance costumes.