30 Minutes

Now that Ian is taking 4 naps a day in his crib, I can pretty much guarantee that I'll have 30 minutes each afternoon to myself. I know I should be grateful given there was a long stretch there where just 30 minutes would have seemed amazing since I was holding Ian 22 hours a day, but I really would like more than 30 minutes. Ian's naps have consistently been 30 minutes long lately. He is up for about 2 hours in between each nap. Sometimes it's hard to get him to stay up a full 2 hours. Nadia usually naps for 1.5-3 hours so it's pretty much a given that Ian will have one of his naps sometime during that time span. Unfortunately today Nadia's nap was less than one hour long. I let her fuss for awhile so that I could at least have 20 minutes to get something accomplished. I had hoped to clean the three bathrooms. I did clean the 3 toilets and sinks, but 20 minutes wasn't enough time for me to also scrub the floors. In light of the time spent nursing each day, I don't have much trouble getting my schoolwork done since I can do almost all of it on the computer. What I struggle to accomplish are those tasks that I can't seem to do while watching the kids - cooking, exercising, and cleaning for example. I have mastered the art of mowing the lawn while carrying Ian in the Snugli. That is getting to be quite a workout now that he weighs 14lbs 9oz! Nadia weighed 16lbs at her 6 month checkup, and Ian might possibly weigh about that much at his 6 month appt. That would be amazing considering she weighed 13lbs at her 4 month check-up compared to his 9lbs! When I get frustrated or overwhelmed or discouraged about my inability to accomplish much around the house, I keep telling myself this is temporary. It will get better. Soon I hope. If Ian would sleep more at night then I wouldn't be going to bed around 8pm most nights and that would give me more time to get other stuff done. And hopefully some day his naps will also be longer which would also give me more time to get stuff done. On the days I teach I end up using those precious 30 minutes to do things like get dressed for work and make a sandwich to eat for dinner. The chores I have done the best with the past 5 months have been sweeping the kitchen floor (I do that on average about twice a day), grocery shopping, laundry, and the dishes. I haven't done very well with dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming, and cooking. I keep reminding myself that time spent with the kids is more important than time spent dusting.

The potty training update would be that she went from Friday morning until Sunday at 4pm without an accident (about 52 hours). On Sunday she stayed dry at church as well as during her afternoon nap, but then she had a big accident while eating dinner in her highchair. Today she had two accidents - the second was also in her highchair at dinner around 5pm. Both times she had been sitting on her potty prior to being put in her highchair. The biggest positive would be that she hasn't had any #2 accidents the past 6 days. This morning for example she pooped in the frog potty (we have two little potties for her) in our bathroom while I was taking a shower. Another positive would be that she has excellent bladder control - she can go hours without peeing. Today I took her to Target and a shoe store, and she stayed dry in the car and while we were shopping even though she hadn't peed for a couple of hours (since her nap). Lastly, she has had a few successes with peeing on the potty. The areas that we still need to work on are peeing on the potty more often, learning to pull down her underwear, and learning to go on other potties (at church for example). For now I just want to keep working on getting her to have more successes with peeing on the potty. Then we'll tackle other things. Of course farther down the road we need to work on skills like wiping, flushing, etc.

When I picked Nadia up from church yesterday, she was painting with the other children. I think it was her first experience with paint. She wasn't happy that I was interrupting him from that activity, so I promised her she could paint more at home yesterday (see above picture). She painted three "masterpieces." Her favorite color when painting yesterday was definitely black.

I discovered that our Target has this extension in front of some shopping carts which is for seating two children (with nice straps). You could easily shop with three young children with this cart! I had Ian (sound asleep) in his carseat in the front part of the cart, and Nadia was sitting in one of the special seats. She loved it! She is still super friendly. She says "hi" so loudly these days that I think half of the store can hear her when she says it. She would make a great greeter at Walmart. Once Ian gets to the point where I don't feel comfortable carrying him in the Snugli, I might switch to shopping more at Target than Walmart just because of these shopping carts. I never would have guessed a few years ago that a type of shopping cart would determine where I shopped, LOL!