Quick 5 Part II (Or, an Additional Quick 3)

Where was all this yesterday when I was trying so hard to come up with five things to say?

1.  Alaina put #2 in the potty yesterday.  The big potty.  With no prompting from me.  She asked to go tinkle in the big potty right before bed, so I set her up there and left for a minute.  All of a sudden she called out "I pooped!"  Sure enough, she did!  We were so proud of her.  She got to eat candy right before bed.  Now, she pooped in her diaper this morning, but I'm not worried.

2.  Someone hijacked our baby monitor channel.  Ours is a two channel deal; one is pretty static-y so I use the other.  Well, in the middle of the night it was making a weird noise, so I switched it to the other one and went to bed.  Today, when I tried to go back to the good channel, I heard noises.  From someone else's house.  I don't know why they were able to hijack the channel.  Seems like we were using it first.  Good thing we're moving.

3.  Did you know they have TV carts at the grocery store?  They look like the carts with the cars on the front for kids, only their a little bigger.  And have a TV built in so the kiddos can watch the tube while mom shops.  I didn't stick around to find out how much it costs to use it, because they are stationed at the customer service counter and it looks like you have to pay.  My first thought was "what the heck?"  My second was I better not knock it.  It's probably a life-saver for some moms.  I hope to see one in use some day.  Back in my day, we just had to stick with our moms and be happy.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled packing...

Quick 5

Ah, a brief respite from packing. 

1.  Every morning Alaina says she wants to get dressed "All by myself."  She is actually doing a pretty good job of it too.  I hand her the clothes right side up, and she struggles her way into them.  She's great at socks, okay at pants, and pretty terrible at shirts, but she'll get it.  And her biggest problem with the pants is getting them up over the cloth diapers.  She's really going to like it once she gets to wear underwear.  Those pants will practically put themselves on.

2.  I've been slowly packing away Alaina's toys.  And I've thrown away a few broken ones.  I do it while she's napping, and she's really been none the wiser.  Except for yesterday, when she asked for one.  I caught myself in a lie, just as I was telling her "I don't know what happened to it!"  I corrected myself and told her what I did.  She was sad, but luckily she's still at an age where she's pretty easily distracted.  I focused her attention on what she did have.

3.  Speaking of packing Alaina's toys, I haven't packed them all, obviously.  She still needs things to play with for a week.  But she keeps bringing one or two to me and asking if she can take it to the new house.  I think it's cute.

4.  Joya is slowly moving out of lumphood.  She still only stays awake for about an hour at a time...an hour and half if we're lucky.  But she spends that hour talking or trying to bring toys to her mouth.  Of course it only makes it in her mouth about 10% of the time, but I love that she's finally trying.  And she's not so content just to lay down anymore.  She wants to be sitting more upright.  We may have reached the end of the Moses basket phase.

5.  I made an amazing crock-pot pot roast this week.  I don't think I've ever made the same pot roast twice, since I'm always trying new recipes and there are a million out there, but I think I've found my go-to recipe.  I do not feel the need to look any further.  It's super easy too.  Take a ranch dressing mix packet, an Italian dressing mix packet and a brown gravy mix packet, mix them together and sprinkle them over the roast in a crock-pot.  Add two cups of water, and voila!  Of course add potatoes and carrots to the crock-pot to your liking.  Lee said the potatoes and carrots were "bangorang."  That says it all.

Only one more week in this place.  It's been good to us, but it's time to move on.

New Year, New MOPS

Today we went to a new MOPS group.  Our old one got closed down by the church running it, which was very sad.  We attended that one for two years, and I was just getting comfortable with all the moms.  But after taking a semester off, I decided that we should find another one.  There were two close by...one didn't have room in the childrens' program for the girls, so the choice was pretty clear.

It's much smaller than the old group.  It's fairly well run, and the moms seem nice enough, although you can tell they've all been together for at least one semester.  I felt no instant connection with anyone, no spark of kindred spirit from anyone.  And Joya was pretty much a mess the whole time.  For the first time in my motherhood, I got paged to the nursery.  She wouldn't settle down for them, so I ended up holding her the entire time.  She was dead tired too...the minute she was in my arms she fell asleep.  I tried laying her down at that point, but she wasn't having any of that. 

All in all, the morning wasn't great.  Good, just not great.  The speaker was amazing.  I wish I could have taken notes.  He was from Heritage Builders and I'm looking forward to exploring their resources.  But we're going back, and the main reason is for Alaina.  She loves things like this.  She doesn't care that she's never been in that classroom, that she's never met the teacher or the kids.  She just wants to go and play.  When I picked her up from her classroom, her first words to me were "I want to stay!"  Lately she's been talking quite a bit about going to school "all by myself!"  I'm always amazed at her demonstrations of her extrovertness.  The girl needs to be around people, and I'm not talking about me, her dad and Joya.

Now if only Joya would settle down, I might be able to relax and see if there are any friends to be had here.

Quick 5

Look at us.  Already one whole week in to 2011.

1.  We may be inching toward potty-training.  We talk about it A LOT, and yesterday I heard Alaina call out "Poop in the potty!" I got terribly excited, thinking she was asking to go.  Well, she might have been, but what she really meant was she had just pooped in her diaper.  I think it's an important step, though.

2. On a related note, I told Alaina that once we get to our new house we'll get serious about the potty training.  She replied "A potty train?!  Hippee!"

3.  Packing is actually going well.  It's actually quite a good feeling, since you can see your accomplishments piling up in the corner.  I'm also pleased with the amount of things I'm finding to throw away or give away.

4.  Joya is becoming more and more vocal.  We thought she might be our quiet one, since Alaina talks enough for a whole household, but Joya seems to be staking her claim.  After our 3:30am feeding this morning I put her pack in her bed, wrapped her up tight and stuck her paci in.  She immediately spit it out and spent the next five minutes saying "Aaa!  Aaa!"  She wasn't crabbing...just talking.  I put her paci back in to keep her quiet so we could all go back to sleep, even though it was terribly cute.

5.  I find it simultaneously cute and slightly annoying that Alaina feels she needs to be within 10 feet of me at all times.  The other day I gave her a snack (a small bowl with some Teddy Grahams and a sippy cup of water) and then went into the bathroom and shut the door so I could take care of a little business.  I was seriously in there for only about two minutes, and when I opened the door, I saw that Alaina had brought her bowl and sippy cup and was sitting right outside the bathroom, quietly eating her snack.  So cute.  Yet so sad.

Sorry I don't have too much to say this week.  Our world is being slowly packed away in boxes, and that's what has been taking up most of my free time this week.  Life just keeps moving along.

Houston, We Have Contact

One of the main, driving forces behind my desire for another baby was the potential for sibling interaction.  I wanted Alaina to have a sibling, a pal, a person to grow up with.  She has been really great about the whole adding a baby to the family thing.  Mostly Alaina just ignores Joya.  Oh, she says hi, especially when Joya is on my lap.  She also likes to climb up to see Joya on the changing table.  But mostly life is business as usual for her.

But then yesterday I laid Joya on Alaina's bed while I put a load of diapers in the wash.  I turned around to see Alaina up on the bed, close to Joya's face saying "Hi Joya!  Hi Joya!"  And Joya was holding on to Alaina's finger and smiling right at her face. 

Up until now Joya has given Alaina the blank stare that she gives to most things that are not Mommy or Daddy.  I think this is the main reason Alaina has just gone about her life.  Joya has just been a noisy little lump that is very uninteresting.  But now, all of a sudden, Joya tracks Alaina as she dances around and is quick to give Alaina a smile if Alaina comes close enough to make eye contact.

I've been waiting for this day.  And it was worth it.

Quick 5

Well, that's it folks.  2010 is coming to a close and I am neither anticipating nor dreading the new year.  Something about small children makes each day seem like just another day.  I'm feeling less than inspired about today's quick 5, but in the spirit of writing I'm just going to write.

1.  Christmas with my family was fun this year.  Lots of babies.  Lots of noise.  While it was great to spend Joya's and Naomi's and Zeke's first Christmases together, I'm a little sad that this year was the Marsh year, only because I know how much fun next Christmas is going to be when the babies are a little less, well, baby.  They sure were cute though.

2.  I love reading end of the year lists.  I've thought about doing a year-long reading list, but I seriously read three to four books a week.  Okay, maybe two to three.  But still, even if it's two a week, that's 104 books.  That's a lot of record keeping. 

3.  Joya did not sleep through the night last night.  So while we're very close to that phase, we're not quite there yet.  It may have something to do with a slightly stuffy nose she was dealing with last night, which makes paci sucking difficult.  I think we can thank Zeke for sharing the snot.

4.  My mom got a laptop for her birthday, and I've been introduced to a new way to use mine: cooking.  I'll admit that I rarely think outside the box, so it never occurred to me to use my laptop during cooking.  I would find a recipe and dutifully print it off our desktop so I could follow the recipe as I cook.  My mom got her laptop last Sunday and immediately busted it out in the kitchen to read a recipe.  I'm all about it.

5.  The elephant in the room is now all the packing I have to do for our move.  Packing and unpacking is always so overwhelming to me.  I'm just trying to keep my eyes on the prize: a bigger new place.  How do army families do this all the time?

Happy New Year everyone!

20 Seconds of Wiggling for Grandma Kimble and Aunt Mindy