Down the Rabbit Hole

Yep, that's where we've been... the holidays took over so completely that I feel as if I've been on a big long vacation from blogger - not that I wanted to leave...

Anyway, I'm back. Hope I can find time to blog more often and also read others' blogs every day again like I used to!

We had a good time with family and now I've been cleaning house, trying to get the thank you notes written and the new stuff put away. Thankfully the girls received more clothes than toys, so they've got cute things to wear (some of them matching sister outfits - so cute!) AND just enough new things to play with to keep them entertained.

The Bug is on the move! Her sleep has continued to deteriorate to a point of being worse-than-newborn, though last night was a lot better. Her second tooth came in the other day so I'm hoping we'll get a rest now until the next tooth or two come in. She really enjoys jumping in her exersaucer and doorway bouncer (just put that up yesterday and she had a hoot while I was in the shower) and sitting and playing on the floor. She is really really good at rolling from back to tummy, but still has not mastered tummy to back - doesn't even try. HOWEVER - once she rolls from back to tummy, she wants to actually move. She is actually starting to get her knees under her already! I have nightmares about having an 8-month-old climber. While I don't think she's actually going to be on that fast of a track, I am figuring she will probably be crawling and walking earlier than Sweet Pea. We'll see... In the mean time I am talking with Sweet Pea every day about what is and isn't safe for The Bug, and trying to make her more conscious of what she leaves on the floor. The biggest potential problem I forsee is paper; she's pretty good at keeping her crayons and colored pencils up on my desk.

Now that the hubub of the holidays is over and I've got the place almost back to normal, I've hooked the baby seat back to the table and now The Bug is joining us for breakfast and dinner. She still thinks that eating solids is kind of weird, but she is cheerful about it and she is getting more food into her mouth these days. She spits it out as soon as it gets in, but it's a start... Also, yesterday she suddenly got an understanding of her sippy cup and now enjoys sucking water out of it... so she can then spit the water out. ha ha! She can't actually hold the cup in a useful way yet, but Sweet Pea is happy to help give The Bug drinks between spoonsful of food.

Sweet Pea has been showing signs for quite a while of wanting more of my attention. I do what I can, but obviously the baby needs me physically more than Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea doesn't blame any of this on the baby and still adores her sister, but she is also suffering a bit and her frustration is coming out in a couple of different ways: 1) demanding that I sleep with her at naptime and refusing to nap if I'm not there (FYI I have only ever napped with her every so often - mostly while pregnant), and refusing to do as we say. When we get tired of her refusal and start using stern voices she gets sad and asks us to "please talk nicely." Then we remind her that we started out talking nicely, and tell her that if she had listened to us and done what we asked the first time or three, we wouldn't get so upset! Gah.

Her sleep is interesting. She sleeps very well, but I find myself at a crossroads with her naps. I can either let her continue to sleep 10 hours per night and then fight about the nap every day, or I can let her sleep 12 hours at night and say goodbye to the nap. I have kept up the first thing because I don't want to give up her nap. But a couple days ago she slept 12 1/2 hours after having a no-nap day, and the day after all the sleep she was SO sweet and wonderful and helpful and listened so well. Her not napping also allowed us more time together without the baby, which I'm sure she appreciated. I don't know... still haven't decided what to do about this. I almost think that giving up the nap would be best, but I'm not sure, and am afraid to go down that road for fear that our wonderful day the other day was just a fluke. ha ha! I guess we could try it out for a few days in a row and see how that goes, and make a decision from there.

I am attempting to become good at crock pottery, i.e. actually having the ingredients and using morningtime to get dinner ready, because I hate reaching 4:30 and starting to wonder what's for dinner. However - I am finding that for the most part crock pot recipes just taste overdone to me. Also, it's difficult to find a lot of good recipes in one cookbook. I've got the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook, and it's got a couple of good ones for sure; I guess we just need to try more. We tried two pot pie recipes in there and they didn't taste anything like we expected. The Southwestern one with corn bread topping had zero spices in it save salt and pepper, which was weird, and the cornbread topping was very dry and mealy - not like corn bread for real. We've decided to see if we can perfect this recipe by adding the spices we think should be in it, and trying to cook actual cornbread on top of it.

Sweet Pea and I finally got the kitchen totally under control the other day and now I'm washing everything as soon as we're done eating, so I won't have to do a ton of dishes after the girls are asleep. It's been nice to be able to do a little something that I want to do at night these days! There is still a lot that needs to be done, but now I feel as if I've got the house under control enough to do a fun thing here and there as well.

I have started going to bed a little earlier since The Bug started trying to kill me by not letting me sleep. A couple nights while one or the other of the girls was sick and I wasn't feeling too hot either, I stayed in bed with them when I got them to sleep. Felt a lot better the mornings after those two nights.

Our New Years Eve was a lot of fun. For the 7th year in a row we went to the party of some local friends - this is the first year we've been so close! This year the house was crawling with babies and kids. The food was fantastic. It was potluck but our hostess made a bunch of super fantastic vegan dishes too. And for the first time ever, the table wasn't mostly covered with cakes! ha ha!

Well, I should get back to the girls; The Bug has been playing and filling her diaper so she will probably need to nurse and nap now.