It's been tough

Last week was a bad week. I don't even know where to start.

...

Marcus is very big on his schedule when it comes to sleeping, I've mentioned this before. There were a couple days last week where his routine was broken. Sabe's been regularly coming home in time to help put the kids to bed so he puts Marcus down since he doesn't get to see him at all during the day. Well there were a few days that he either didn't get home in time or had to stay over night so I had to put him down. When I put him down, I've got Jamesen with me. Jamie doesn't like when you sit. So instead of sitting with Marcus and rubbing his back and snuggling, I'm standing up pacing with Jamesen and Marcus isn't laying down and trying to sleep because he's use to snuggling.

When Marcus' sleep schedule is broken, he doesn't sleep. And the less he sleeps, the less he sleeps. Seems backwards I know, but if he doesn't nap, he doesn't sleep well during the night which means he doesn't nap the next day, etc. So the combination of me putting him to bed and him falling asleep getting pushed back because his schedule was broken etc etc just REALLY made him cranky. Add that he's getting his last set of molars [still...................] and he's been a beast! Usually the thing to remedy this is to take him outside. But of course, pouring buckets. Finally when it stopped raining after a like a day and a half of him doing everything he knows he's not supposed to and being super fussy and clingy and all that jazz, I took him outside to splash in puddles. He was still fussy when we got back in so we went back out after nap time and he was even worse when we got back in again.

I wanted to rip my hair out. Jamesen has also been really fussy. I honestly thing that he might be getting a tooth but I'm not sure. He won't let me sit, he won't eat, he won't sleep. It's been exhausting. I have to stand and rock him back and forth all day every day to get him to stay asleep. Lucky for me, the boys have been passing out from exhaustion at the same time every day so I get a break at least.

It got so bad for awhile there that I had tried everything to calm them both down at the same time and when nothing had worked and I had nothing left under my sleeves, I just sat there and cried with them. Sabe was actually a bit worried about me for awhile there. He got the day off on Sunday and even though he hybernated most of the day, he kept Marcus upstairs with him for his nap and Jamesen I guess was so exhausted that he slept the entire time too and I just scrapped. I got like 3 and a half hours of scrapping done and then my neighbor and I took the babies [we both have toddlers and babies] to Walmart and just walked around grocery shopping. She's been pretty stressed too so we both had a nice time walking around and talking and not dealing with the crazy 2 year olds.

I've been staying up till like 2 am just calming myself down. It's hard to go to sleep after having an extremely aggrivating day, day after day. I've gotten tons of scrapping done in my down time though, so that's good.

Today was better. Daddy was home to put Marcus down yesterday and naptime was on time today so it went more smoothly. Plus it was sunny so we were able to go the park.

Being a mommy is hard work. I'm not gonna lie, there have been plenty of times that I wish that I wasn't a mommy just for a day. It's a good thing their so dang cute at the end of the day when they're sleeping and peaceful.

Something Blue

In the original, Marcus had a huge bruise on his forehead from running towards me and face planting. I'm pretty proud of this photoshop job and it's my entry for this week's Blue contest at I Heart Faces.

I need a pumpkin... or 4

I know I said in an earlier blog that it was starting to feel like fall, but now it's official! We went out in the back this morning and it was crisp and cool and the wind was chilly. We were all wearing long sleeves, leaves were blowing through the air and the smell... it just smells like fall. And I kept thinking to myself, "The only thing that would make this perfect, is if I had a few pumpkins chilling by my door."

Can you picture

How you would feel if your son or daughter needed a bone marrow transplant?
Now think of how you would feel if they couldn't find a match...



How devastated would you be? You could save a life. Join me in registering to be a bone marrow doner at BE THE MATCH . It could be your kid someday.

FAQS—

Isn’t it PAINFUL to donate marrow??

According to the National Marrow Registry, “General or regional anesthesia is always used for this procedure. Donors feel no needle injections and no pain during the marrow donation process. You can expect to feel some soreness in your lower back for a few days or longer.” Think you can handle that?

WHY should I donate?

You could very well be the only person on the registry of MILLIONS who is a match. According to the Puget Sound Blood Center, “There is a critical need for more volunteer donors. Many patients, especially people of color, cannot find a compatible donor among those on the Registry. A large, ethnically diverse group of prospective donors will give more patients a chance for survival.” Every single person who signs up is giving hope.

Is it easy to register?

After filling out your online registration with Be the Match you’ll receive a test kit. Simply take a couple swab samples from inside your cheek and send it back to them. It took me less than ten minutes to register online and five minutes to send the swabs back.

Who Pays?

Donors never pay for donating and are never paid to donate.

What if I can’t or don’t want to donate, but I’d still like help?

Volunteer. Make a contribution. Pray.

If I register is it certain I will be called to donate?

Nope. I wish it was that easy. You may never be called or your might be one of a number of potential matches. I’m hoping for the latter.

Is it safe to donate if I have kids?

Yes. Absolutely. Your body replaces donated marrow with four to six weeks! Isn’t that amazing? The average donor is back to feeling normal within a week of the their procedure.

Again with the losing sleep

I'm up again because of stalker friend. She's emailed me again and I was dumb enough to read and respond *sigh* I wish some new drama would hurry and take my place in her life because I'm sick of her stupid contradicting hypocritical emails. I don't know if she knows about this blog since I think I've hid it pretty well, but I wouldn't put it past her to search for me on blogger. I'm sure if she does know about this blog I'll get a nasty email about it. It's a good thing she's blocked and all her emails go to my spam bin. I forget to look in there. I wouldn't have even noticed her recent email had I not been waiting for an email from someone else and was looking in there just in case. I was quite surprised to see that email in fact.

That being said, Sabe told me my Christmas present, lol!! He's going to get me a Canon Rebel Xsi. I'm pretty excited about it. There's a lot that goes into a DSLR though, a lot more than just a point and shoot camera. With a point and shoot you can buy a regular memory card and most just use AA batteries. DSLR's have different batteries. You can buy just the body but then you have to buy a lense and you have to have a certain memory card as well. And to be honest, I'm not quite sure if the battery pack comes with the camera or not. When I first started looking at them tonight, I knew I had to get the body and also a lense and then all the sudden I realized I needed a new memeory card as well and who knows about the batteries! Good thing I've got my friend Kim though. She's a budding photographer [who I think is just amazing!] and is always good for information and advice. You might want to expect lots of emails once I get the thing Kim ;)

My mom has told me that Jared [her oldest baby] was sitting up by 3 months because he was such a screamer that he had awesome stomach muscles. Today I set Jamesen on the couch next to me and he lifted himself away from the back of the couch and sat for a few seconds before slowly falling foreward. He was trying so hard to keep himself upright. Marcus wasn't doing that until 4 months. Jamesen is only 2 and a half months! I kinda want to cry about this. I'm so picturing my future when he's two and Marcus is four and I take them to the store and turn around for two seconds and they're both gone. And I know this is a very real possibility because I got lost quite a few times as a kid. Of course, my mom had 6 others and Jake was worse than me about disappearing, so I don't hold it against her. Specially when I remember purposefully slipping away on one occasion. Basically, I'm in trouble and I know it and there's nothing I can do about it.

Man I'm so bummed. I hate drama. It just eats at me and makes me upset and angry and short tempered. I think I'm going to try and sleep even though I know I won't be able to. I'm going to be dead later today :(

completely candid

This week is completely candid and I think I've got the perfect shot :) Hope you don't mind Dorothy!

Falling for Autumn

Autumn is definitely upon us! We've been wearing long sleeves for the last couple of days. And I do have to say that the boys look so cute in long sleeves! Of course, they look cute in anything, but that's beside the point. The leaves are turning and falling and Marcus loves it. Last year during this time, we would go outside and spend hours hunting down leaves and listening to them crunch under our feet. Anywhere we went he would have to crunch the leaves and he would throw a huge fit if we didn't let him.

When we go to the park I don't normally let him walk because it's a bit of a far walk for a little person. He makes it all the way there and plays but gets tired about half way on the walk back and it's very hard to hold onto a two year old while you've got a 2 month old in the sling. Anyways, we walked yesterday and it was so cute to watch him going after all the leaves and jumping all over them. He was grabbing as many leaves as his little hands would let him.



Until he found a stick. Nothing's better than a good long stick that you can drag along the ground behind you!

While Lynne was here, we went shopping for fall clothes for the boys. They really did need the clothes so it was fun to just get what they needed and not worry about Sabe getting mad at me for frivolous purchases. I can't help buying stuff for my boys! I'd much rather buy for them than for me! I went to buy some booties for Jamesen because he's going to need something more than just socks to keep his feet warm. Have I mentioned how long his feet are?? I'd already had some newborn booties that were far from fitting him so I grabbed a 0-6 month size and they weren't even close either! So I put a 6-12 month size up next to his foot and his feet are barely small enough to fit in them. I bought them anyways. It's really funny to see his feet in them. They barely fit the length but his feet are so skinny that they kind just slip off him if he doesn't have socks on.

I'm trying to figure out the manual mode on my camera. As you all know, I'm planning on being a photographer some time in the future so I might as well get going. I'm having a few issues with it, but for the most part it's going all right. Here's a few of my recent pictures in manual.



My friend is going to let me take maternity pics of her and then some newborn pics of her baby later on. She's only just finding out what she's having in the next few weeks so it's going to be a while, but I hope to have my Rebel by then. We'll see!

Also!! A big step int he right direction for talking with Marcus. He's started doing animal sounds. They're signs, but he does sounds with them and he'll mimic the sounds you say. I'm so excited about this! It's been coming slowly, but I'm excited that he's going to be talking soon. Today would be a nice day for a talking Marcus. He keeps crying and I don't know what he wants, lol! So yes, we're celebrating this next step in Marcus' speech! Great job little man! He does elephant, cow, dog, snake, lion, duck and a monkey. That's all I can think of. Here's a quick VID.

I have a feeling that Jamesen will be sitting very soon. If he's leaning up against the couch he can hold himself rather than falling to either side. I put him in the bebe pod today while I did dishes and he sat perfectly in it and just cooed and smiled at me. He's got such a sweet personality when he's not screaming. The smiles, giggles and coos more than make up for him screaming! We're definitely blessed to have him in our lives!

Marcus is starting to think so more and more as well. I got this picture. This was when I was having some issue with manual mode. I think I can fix it in photoshop but I've not tried yet. I'll work on it when I go to scrap it.


Thanks for reading :)

Doa-dee

There are very few people that I would trust to watch my kids for long periods of time without me there. Obviously Dorothy is one of them, because I had her come and watch Marcus while I had Jamesen. Thing with Dorothy is that she's so calming that you can't help but love her. Marcus does! I didn't hear it because I was hanging out with Kahlan, but apparently Marcus said Dorothy's name quite a few times! How cute is that?!? We definitely love Doa-dee in our house! :D

And we love the little person that comes with her too. Marcus loves Kahlan and Kahlan loves Marcus so it's a win-win! Here's some pictures of them at the park today. She totally wore him out big time! He'll sleep awesome tonight, that's for sure!



And I'm totally kicking myself at this point because somehow Grandma LaBare came to visit and I've not yet taken a picture of her and Jamesen together. This is the first time she's met him and I'm a serious picture person. It's baffling to me that I've not taken one yet. I'm going to make it a point to take tons of pics of them tomorrow because I would die if I keep forgetting to take one. How crappy would that be? "Oh yeah, you met Grandma Lynne when you were two months old but I only took pics of her and Marcus together, sorry!"

Speaking of pics of her and Marcus....


Oh and do you remember me talking about my obsession with Halloween?? We bought Marcus' costume a few weeks ago and I dug out his old penguin costume from two years ago for Jamesen. My kids are going to be the cutest kids out trick or treating this Halloween, that's for sure!



We also got some pictures of us with the kids. It always seems that the Marcus pictures are with Sabin, because that's who Sabe's corralling when he's with us, and the Jamesen pics are with me, because I'm always wearing him.



I need to get better about taking pictures of Sabe and Jamesen or poor Jamesen's scrapbook is going to be very lacking! And that would make me feel like a bad mom. I promised myself when I had my second child that I would take just as many pictures of him as I did of Marcus and that I wouldn't stop taking pictures of Marcus and only take pictures of him either. So far I've been doing pretty good about making it equally balanced and now that Jamie is smiling I've been inclined to take more pics of him since they aren't all just of him sleeping.

Marcus is getting easier to take pictures of again too. There was a while there where it was impossible to get a good picture of his face. I scrapbooked a page of his progession from a year to two years and from months 13-17 I had barely anything to choose from! It was a little bit irritating to be honest.

Oh and before I forget... We had Jamie's 2 month well check today. He's been deamed a nice healthy boy. He's 13 lbs 2 oz [half an lb more than Marcus at this age] and 24.5 inches [half an inch taller too]. He's in the 84th % for height and 60 something for weight. We'll see if he stays at that curve. Right after 2 months is when Marcus dropped really far in his curve into the under 10%. We'll see! He's going to be tall though, he's promising that much.

He's also promising to be very busy like Marcus is. The kid is already pulling himself into a sitting position. He can't hold himself there, but if you lay him with his back to your chest, he's pull himself into a sitting position and then fall forward. He actually fell of the couch doing that :( I don't know what it is about our kids... but Hill and LaBare genes mixed make for busy bodies! Which has actually led us to decide that we're done. We had wanted three, but with Jamesen promising to be just as [if not more] busy than Marcus, and me being a single married mom, I just don't think I could handle being huge and pregnant while trying to keep two small children with very loud personalities and ideas from running in opposite directions. Plus, we're very happy with two boys and I'm very ok with never being pregnant again.

Anyways, that's my recent happenings. Until next time [which might be quite soon... :) ]

I heart faces- Contemplative

This is my entry for this week's "Contemplative" Challenge over at I Heart Faces. It's not nearly as good as my friend Kim's because she's such an amazing photographer, but that's ok.. I'll still enter it :)

Recent Happenings

I was scrapping and I saw a funny...



The first one is Jamesen and the second is Marcus. They're almost exactly the same age in those pics. Don't they look a like?? How funny is that??

So Marcus and I have been getting lots of mosquito bites lately. The mosquitoes here bite you despite eating pickles and the bites are super itchy and stay forever! Or so I thought they were mosquito bites... Yeah, they're freaking chigger bites!! I went to our friends house and she was asking if we've been getting chigger bites and I said no, but we're getting tons of mosquito bites. She looked at them and told me they were chigger bites and then it all made sense. We've only got them on our ankles, they don't go away when you don't scratch them and they're SOOOOO itchy.

Speaking of gross bugs... I was hanging my diapers up to dry...

And then I went to pull them down and stuff them and I see something crawling on them and look down. Yeah it's a freaking tick!! It was crawling towards me and when I bent down to look and see what it was it reared up and reached for me! So I squished it. And then pictured what would have happened had I not caught it... It either would have found Gary and we never would have found it because she's never outside or it would have stayed in Jamesen's diaper and my poor 2 month old would have gotten it!! That just grosses me out so bad. I pulled M's first tick off him a few days ago and wanted to torch something.


Oh I have to show you a cute video of Jamesen, HERE

And today Marcus was so cute. He held out his arms as if asking to hold Jamesen so I stuck him on his lap and he was hugging and kissing and being so cute.


I got some other pics but Marcus' hands were really cold so Jamesen wasn't too happy, lol.

Tah tah for now! :D

A Marcus funny

When you cloth diaper a breastfed baby, their poops tend to stain the diaper. Since you can't use bleach on them or you ruin them, the best way to get said stains out is to sun bleach them. We've got a clothes line minus the actual line out back. I asked Sabe to bring something home to run across so he did. Today I put my cloth diapers up to dry and sun bleach.

I had a basket full of the shells and inserts sitting in a camping chair next to the line. I got them all up but the last few in my hand when I saw Marcus holding a diaper and a clothes pin out of the corner of my eye and I quickly scanned the line to find out where he had pulled the diaper from... and there was nothing missing. So I looked at him.

There he is, butt naked with a full dirty diaper in one hand and a stolen clothespin in the other, standing on his tippy toes on the camp chair trying to hang up his diaper. That was the first time he'd ever taken his snap diapers off. I seriously had to turn away. I didn't want him to see me smile because I wanted him to know that taking off his diaper was not a good thing but that was sooo cute! It was very very hard not to smile and if I had had my camera on me I would have taken a picture before reprimanding him, lol.

Which... you know you're a photographer [or scrapbooker... or in my case both even if the photographer is very amatuer] when you take pics of your kids before correcting bad behavior. Or cleaning up the huge mess their making. But you know, when it all comes down to it, they'll only be this size for a blink of an eye. You better take as many pictures as you can before it's too late.

Life as I know it

Life right now for me revolves around diaper changes, meals, nap times and bedtime. I think I've finally gotten into the groove of two kids, though my house would say otherwise, lol. Just because I've gotten into the groove of taking care of two kids at one time doesn't mean that I've gotten into the groove of taking care of two kids while doing all of my chores at the same time! I think my oven has 4 week old food encrusted on it still [yum!!].

Marcus' eye is almost all better. We had some drama with that. I turned it into drama, lol. I lost his eyedrops. I don't know why but it made me freak out. I searched the entire house over and over and over again searching for these stupid drops. His eye had just started getting better and then I go and lose the eye drops! I was afraid that if I didn't find them, his eye would start to get worse in a matter of minutes and if I did find them, the infection would suddently be resistant the drops and I'd have to somehow work out having the car one day so I could take him back to the pedi and get a different kind of drops all while his eye is swelling like a huge balloon and he goes blind or something. I almost started crying to Sabe on the phone. He said he would try and come home and help me find them.

Thing is, whenever I can't find anything, Sabe will come home and find it in like 5 minutes. So he gets home, searches the downstairs and doesn't find it and the longer he goes without finding it, the more visions of Marcus completely blind in his left eye go through my head. Then he called down that he found it and I of course I wanted to know where... They were in my pants pocket. The same pants that I searched through at least 4 times. I swear they were not in those pants. I think Sabe had them and planted them there when he came home!

There's a girl I know who's hubby is in the same unit Sabe's in. She's got a toddler a couple months older than Marcus and she's pregnant with number two. It's really nice to have a friend who's in the same place in life and is in the same situation as me. We both are going through hubby's barely being here and it's nice to have company in that misery. Her little girl is named Rebecca and she's really cute. It's funny she's got at least 2 inches on Marcus. Her legs are so long.




And I don't know what it is about Marcus, but all the girls we know constantly talk about him. Connie can't even mention his name in her house because Abby freaks out and wants to come and visit. Rae use to constantly ask to play with Marcus and Becca apparently does too. What a ladies man!

Anyways, my brain just kinda shut off so I think I'm done :)

Oh the sty!

On Sunday morning I woke to find that Marcus' eye was a bit swollen. I reconsidered taking him to church thinking it was pink eye or something random that he could give to the other kids. I gave him some benedryl and it seemed to help so off to church we went. When I picked him up from the nursery, I was able to get a good look at his eye and saw a tiny white head kind of thing in his eyelashes. Sabe had one of those once but I don't remember it being like this.

I looked it up and sounded like a sty. I called into his pedi to see if there was anything I could do about it and she said that the way I was describing the swelling made her think something else was going on so we made an appointment for the next day.

We had to get up early to take daddy to work so that I could have the car and when I saw Marcus' eye I almost cried. It was almost completely swollen shut. I counted down the time to his drs appointment, hoping there wasn't something more serious but almost wishing there was so we could get rid of it since you really can't do anything for a sty.

Right before we get there I notice that his eye starts draining a weird yellowish goop and I packed the kids in the car and hurried to our appointment. The student pedi came in to check him out initially and confirmed there was a sty but wanted the Dr. to check him out just in case. The Dr. took one look and said, "Wow that's impressive. I've never seen swelling like that on a child." Hmmm.. She concluded that there was an infection in his eye ontop of having a sty. Joy!

The whole thing happened the day after Marcus was digging in his diaper and got poop on the tips of his fingers. I'm grossed out to say it but I have a feeling he rubbed his eye with his poopy hand. *sigh*

Bless his heart. He could be on his death bed and he would still be smiling.

On a lighter note, I took some pics today and can't believe how much Jamesen has grown already!!


Isn't it amazing?? And yes there's always going to be this difference in skin color... Jamesen definitely has Sabe's skin and Marcus has mine. Poor Marcus.

At this time two years ago...

We were just getting home from our trip to Manti while I was 6 days overdue. I took a quick shower and went to bed because I was feeling sick. 5 hours from now I woke Sabin up after having some extremely intense back contractions that were 2 minutes apart. 9 hours later, Marcus Orion came into this world without a sound, just looking around the room.

I can't even believe how fast time has gone. It totally baffles me. I swear I was just bawling my eyes out because his first year had just flown by.

It amazes me the total difference a year can make.



All the sudden I find myself not with a baby Marcus, but with a little boy Marcus. There's no baby about him anymore. He's smart, he solves problems [even if that problem is only "How is the best way to get that thing off the fridge that mom is trying to keep from me?"] and is testing his limits. He can even hold his own pretty well. One day when Jamesen was only a couple weeks old and screaming constantly, I forgot to eat and so I forgot to feed Marcus. The kid went into the kitchen, climbed on the counters and tried to open up all the boxes of food he could find and finally found some candy that he was trying to open when I had noticed that I hadn't heard him in awhile.

At first I was mad. But then I realized what he was doing and I was blown away. Not only did I feel like the worst mother ever, but I was blown away by his ability to be fed up with mom not paying attention to him telling her he was hungry and taking things into his own hands. And going from place to place trying to find some food for himself.

He's become very affectionate. He loves to give kisses and hugs and pets his little brother while saying baby. He likes to hug Gary, thought it's with such force that Gary doesn't like it. He gets upset if he makes me mad. He knows I'm angry by my face and will cry and give me hugs and kisses as if to say he's sorry.

He's able to climb up anything and everything and one thing he's trying to learn is the fence around our backyard, lol. He's gotten to the top and only needed to throw his leg over the other side and climb down.

He understands everything you say to him and even though he doesn't talk, he lets you know what he wants. He's starting to point at things and grab your face and turn it that way until you guess what it is he's looking at. He'll keep pointing and babbling frantically until you say what the thing is. I'm getting pretty good at guessing the things he's showing me. He loves squirrels, motorcycles, dogs, cats, birds, pretty much anything that moves. It can be hard to figure out what he's talking about, except with vehicles.

2 years has made such a difference in my little man. I can't believe how much he's changed and grown and how smart he is. Happy birthday big man. You mean the world to me and have from the minute I felt you kick inside of me. I can't live a day without your smile and I love that you're mine!