Last Wednesday was Sloan’s last day of preschool for this year. To celebrate, we went to Chuck E Cheese after school with the kids from his class. Just as we were about to leave, one of the mom’s told me that her daughter has been talking about Sloan kissing her on the lips for a week. Sloan came over and heard us talking about it and right there in the middle of CEC, leaned over and smacked her on the lips again! No shame. All puffed up from the amusement/horror on my face the little Casanova turned and kissed another little girl, then turned around and kissed the first girl again! Jeez! But, before you think of my son as a little lady lover, you should know that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Lee apparently was known for his kissing abilities back in his day. I’ve heard plenty of stories of him ducking behind buildings at church camps to kiss little girls. From what I can tell, his lips got around! So Sloan is apparently a natural born ladies man. When I told Lee he just kind of smiled and nodded. He was all, “That’s my boy!” and “At least he’s kissing the girls!” He was no help. So Sloan and I sat down later that day and talked about who he could kiss (me, his grandmothers and his sister) and who he could not (any other girl). We agreed that when he was a grown up man and found one special girl that he loved, then he could kiss her. Until then no one else. Riiight. Since he appears to be just like his father, I suspect he’s got plenty of kissing days ahead of him!

In other news, we pulled the trigger and put Sloan and Tia together. So far it’s going okay, but not great. I suspect it will take a little time although I hope not too long because I live for bedtime and bedtime has been taking two hours or more. So we’ll see. Landon had a horrible night last night! Seriously awful. He’s had a cold for about a month now. If this is what happens every time he gets a tooth, I’m not sure we’ll survive the next two years. He just could not sleep last night so today I’m operating on about 3 hours of sleep. Momma doesn’t do good with 3 hours of sleep. Praying for patience!!! Do any of you know if lactose intolerance can cause cold like symptoms? I’m just wondering if maybe we need to switch Landon to Soy based formula. If anyone has wisdom, I’m all ears! One good thing coming out of Sloan and Tia sleeping together is that we may end up getting both of them night time potty trained at the same time. We’ve been trying for a couple of months now to get Sloan trained at night. Now he and Tia think it’s funny to get up and go potty numerous times, which drives me mad – but they’ve both been waking up dry! We may end up with only 1 kid in diapers. That’s cool. Anyway, we’ll see what happens with this sleep thing. This is still not my ideal long term solution. I’m hoping we can get a little room set up for Landon by finishing in part of our garage, then move Tia back into her room. Until then we’ll deal the best we can!

Last night we had to make an emergency run to the Urgent Care for Sloan who was screaming with an ear ache. It was indeed an ear infection. After the doctor, we headed to Walgreens to fill the prescriptions. Poor Sloan was exhausted and in so much pain so I decided rather than go through the drive thru window, I would take him inside to fill the prescriptions, hoping that his “patheticness” would make them feel sorry for him and fill the prescriptions faster. That was a friggin’ stroke of genius! They had all three prescriptions filled in less than five minutes. All three pharmicists worked on it and got us in and out of there so fast. It was great! And Sloan really milked it. He laid across my lap half comatose, his feverish little eyes all pitiful and sad. I was so glad I did that.

This is only the third time I’ve actually set foot in Walgreens in the last six months. I usually just drive through the pharmacy if I have to. I think they are way overpriced so I never go there to buy stuff. But the last three times I have been in this particular Walgreens, something interesting has happened. The first time was in early December. Sloan and I ran in there to get a couple of things and while we were there, Jenna Fisher, the girl who plays Pam in The Office, walked in. I didn’t even know she was from here until I got home later and googled her. She went to Parkway – random. A couple of months ago I went in to grab some milk and a man dressed as a clown was standing at the register. I don’t know why he was at Walgreens, but he bought beef jerky, Coke and Tylenol. Again, random. Then, last night as Sloan and I were leaving, a little girl who had clearly just come from a gymnastics workout was tumbling down the isle. Seriously, she must have done four or five back handsprings in a row. She was very good actually! So anyway, if you guys are looking for an interesting experience, it appears that the Walgreens at Baxter and Clayton is a hoppin’ place.

Here are a few pictures from yesterday. I’m biased, but isn’t Landon the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? Oh, and he slept all night last night! Go figure. Just when I was ready to give it all up, he sleeps all night. I’m hopefully optimistic that this is the beginning of a new pattern, but also a little skeptical. We’ll see what happens tonight. Anyway, enjoy these photos!

Thanks for the comments and emails regarding the last post. I know this phase won’t last forever, it just feels eternal right now. Someday, soon I hope, life will feel normal again. Tomorrow is Sloan’s last day of school so maybe once we have a little less going on things will settle down. Or maybe not. Who knows? Oh, and as a disclaimer to those of you preparing to have your third, or hoping to have three children: everything I wrote in that last post is a lie. Three kids is a breeze. You should all do it!

Truly, I obviously would not trade my children for the world. They are each so special and so unique and so very precious to me. This is a season, I know, and it is short and one day they will be grown and I will long for these days again…at least that’s what I’ve heard. I just don’t want to miss it, you know? And I feel like I am a little because it’s so difficult. So that’s part of my struggle. It’s a battle between longing for this season to end and hoping it doesn’t go too fast. Whew. That makes my head hurt. I’m going to take a bath and go to bed!

*update: Last night was another rough night. Landon screamed for over an hour. We finally moved him into the pack n play in our room to let him cry it out. But let me tell you what God did. After an hour of listening to him scream, I couldn’t take it anymore so I got up and picked him up and held him tight against my chest, taking deep breaths to calm my own spirit as well. As he slowly began to calm down he pulled his head back and looked in my eyes. In the darkness I could see the tears glinting on his little cheeks. The look he gave me was so sweet and so precious and in that moment I was reminded that he almost didn’t make it to life on this earth. I remembered the doctor’s words that miscarriage was a very good possibility and I was suddenly so grateful for that moment. Then my mind drifted to the story of Audrey Caroline and I realized that all over the world there are mothers whose arms ache to hold their children. Mothers who would gladly get up in the middle of the night because it would mean that their children were alive. And I was grateful. Isn’t God good to remind us of these things when we’ve reached the point of desperation? I’m tired today, utterly exhausted, but I’m grateful for this fatigue as it serves as a reminder that I hold in my hands great blessings. Blessings which were no guarantee. So I am grateful today.

I’m too tired to think of a creative or even non-creative title tonight. It’s been one of those days. Sometimes I feel like I am not cut out for this mom thing. The transition from no kids to one kid was difficult, but difficult in a what-on-earth-do-I-do-with-this-squawking-little-creature way. For me, the transition from 1-2 kids was a breeze. There were, of course, moments when I felt completely overwhelmed, but mostly I felt like it was a pretty seamless time in our lives. The transition from 2-3 kids, however, has thrown me for a loop. I knew it would be tough. I prepared myself for tough. I didn’t know it would last this long, though. I still don’t feel like we’ve competely settled in. The sleeping thing is killing me softly. I have three kids who all have completely different sleep patterns and only two rooms to put them in and it just doesn’t seem to be working. I am finally ready to try Tia and Sloan together. I have hesitated on this for a variety of reasons. First, they are sooooooooo different! Sloan wants the door open, Tia does better with it closed (an open door represents a lot more freedom than she can handle). Sloan wakes up screaming because his toe hurts, Tia vomits then goes right back to sleep in her vomit (not exaggerating). Sloan scares easily, Tia does not. Tia wakes up earlier than Sloan. Sloan goes to bed later than Tia. So, you can see that moving them in the same room has been hard for me to do. But, putting Landon in the room with Tia is just not working well. At least not right now. He won’t sleep through the night. We need to let him cry it out a little, but then he wakes her up. He wakes up at a different time every night. She wakes him up when she gets up in the morning. Blah, blah, blah… So, I just don’t know what to do. We tried putting Landon in a pack n play in our bathroom, but he doesn’t sleep great in that thing and who can blame him? I don’t sleep well on a board either! Plus, Lee has to get up and leave early a lot of mornings, so that makes things sticky. Anyway, these are my dilemmas, my stresses, these days. I’m really struggling with frustration and discouragement, a lot of which is compounded by my complete lack of sleep. But we will likely give Tia and Sloan a try together and see what happens. If it’s awful, then I don’t know what we do. Buy a bigger house? Hmmmm…tempting, but probably not wise. We’ll see.
On a brighter note, happy mother’s day a day late to all the mommies in my life. Since I never do anything on time, it seems fitting to post this now. Particularly to my own mother and mother-in-law. I love you both dearly and appreciate both of you so much. I’m one of those rare and blessed individuals who truly has a great relationship with both mom and MIL. Not many people can say that and I’m so grateful that I can.
Now it’s off to bed. My mom actually has the two older kids tonight, so I may get a decent night’s sleep!

In case you hadn’t noticed, I recently joined the St. Louis Bloggers Guild. You can click on the icon on my side bar and link to the bloggers guild site to read more about them if you’re interested. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I love writing and am always looking for contacts in the writing field. Second, I wanted to branch out and meet some new folks – something that is not always comfortable for me. I get very awkward and uncomfortable around people I don’t know, especially if Lee, my nevermetastranger husband isn’t with me. I needed to challenge myself and this seemed like a good opportunity. The good news is no one at the meeting today had two heads or breathed fire so it wasn’t as intimidating as I thought! Third, I just want to learn more about blogging. I had no idea what a powerful form of communication it is! We talked about some cool stuff today and I’m just so excited to learn more and get more involved with projects. There’s a really neat opportunity coming up that I would love to write about but don’t fully have a handle on how to explain it yet, so I’ll write about it later. Anyhoo, just wanted to share! Happy Saturday.

…which means my husband has been like a kid in a candy store since Sunday when we brought it home. Since that time I’ve heard these phrases uttered in our home: “D’Oh!” “Oh, I was robbed,” “Booyah,” “Oh, come on, Lee” (talking to himself, of course) and “Son of a BEEP.” In Lee’s defense, that last phrase was muttered jokingly because he could hear me giggling at him – he doesn’t usually sit around and cuss at the TV. What is it about video games that turn grown men into adolescents again? Don’t get me wrong – I love the Wii. It’s good fun and I can get into it too. But my attention span is limited when it comes to such activities, whereas Lee could do it for hours on end. The best is the WWII game he got where he gets to fly around and kill the Germans. That’s when his true colors come out. Kill and destroy! Hah! I can see the satisfactory gleam in his eye every time he takes out another bad guy – redeeming the world from the confines of his couch! What a guy…

My mom and dad took Sloan with them to their condo in Florida for the week so I’ve had an extremely leisurely two days. Two kids is a breeze man! Back when I just had two kids I remember thinking how hard it was. Now I realize that that was a walk in the park. In the last two days I’ve actually managed to get laundry done, get the house relatively clean, and almost potty train Tia! WaaHooo! We made our second attempt at potty training yesterday – it went alright, but today has been spectacular! We’re on our way. While I miss Sloan a lot, I know that he’s having a blast and I’m enjoying the 5 day “break.” Life is good.

Since Sloan is away, we have been trying to really pour into Tia this week. She doesn’t get our undivided attention very often so we’ve tried to really concentrate on loving on her. Because we’re potty training, it’s been hard to leave the house, so I decided to bring a “fun” activity to us. I bought finger paints. I’ve never bought finger paints before. In general, I prefer to leave messy crafts to the preschool teachers who are actually being paid to deal with the mess. So, and this makes me sound terrible, I rarely bring out crafts. Even markers are a pain because my kids can only keep them on paper for about 10 seconds, then I end up scrubbing marker off of everything else. But today, I decided to go for it. I put Tia in an old t-shirt and let her have at it and she pretty much had a ball. Here are a few shots – evidence of why I rarely allow them to do this!

I linked to this blog off another friend’s blog. I recently told you how much I love the group Selah. I am just always uplifted by their music and have followed them for many years. A month ago, lead singer Todd and his wife had a special little girl. Read this post to be uplifted, but have Kleenex handy!

I’ve posted about this before, but honest to God, my kids fight so terribly that it wears me out and breaks my heart. I so want them to love one another and deep down I know that they do. Despite the fact that at any given moment, one of them is hitting or kicking or pushing the other and someone is crying, they both constantly want the other around to play with. It’s a strange dynamic. This morning, however, was a horrible morning. Both of them were being horrible to one another. Tia was annoying Sloan (sometimes legitimately, sometimes just by her very presence) and Sloan, the king of overreaction, spent the morning yelling at her. After telling them 800 times to keep their hands to themselves and quit screaming, I lost it. I don’t like being mean mommy and I work really, really hard at patience because I know it’s not a virtue that would best describe me. So, it’s not for lack of trying. But, when they woke Landon up from his nap, that was the straw that broke this mommy’s back! I sat them both down and in my semi-calm voice (I was borderline yelling, trying hard to hold back) explained to them that they will be brother and sister for life and they needed to start being more kind and loving toward one another. I could see that that was not working at all, so I moved to plan B. I made them sit on the ottomans facing each other and smile at one another for ten minutes. They were not allowed to get up, touch one another, or talk unless they had a nice thing to say to one another. If they broke any of those rules, I added time to the clock. I think they ended up sitting there for 13 minutes due to their apparent unruly feet that kept “accidentally” kicking the other person. Here is what they looked like in their time out:

I made them each say five nice things about the other. Sloan told Tia she had cute hair, pretty eyes, a cute nose, cool clothes and nice fingers. Because Tia still hardly talks she just kept saying “dis-ee-dow” over and over, which can mean a whole host of things. When their time was up, I made them hug and saying I love you (or dis-ee-dow one more time).I wish I could say this helped. They were nicer to each other for a few minutes after that, but it didn’t last long. Although this afternoon, Sloan was very sweet to Tia when she fell and scraped her knee, telling her over and over how sorry he was that she got hurt. That warmed my heart briefly. If only it would last! If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle incessent sibling fighting, I’m all ears!