All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!

Category Archives: Matthew


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The Monday Snapshot – BOOKED!

It’s been 2 years since we took a REAL vacation.  We took a “Babymoon” to Cap.tiva Isla.nd in March 2011 and had a great time.  I was 5 months pregnant at the time which was great timing.  This time, I’ll be 6.5 months pregnant, which will be different, but I think it will be JUST FINE… because WE ARE GOING TO DIS.NEYW.ORLD!

I have tried to get B to go to Disne.ywo.rld for years, because I think it’s super fun for adults.  It’s never been very high on his list (in fact, it’s at the very bottom of his list).  BUT – I want us to take a trip that is super FUN for Matthew.  And it needs to be easy for B and me.  Traveling with a toddler is hard work, so direct flights are a must.  We have one to Orlando from central Iowa (amazing).  Traveling with a toddler is exhausting for us and said toddler, so a comfortable place with lots of space is a must for naps and regrouping.  Traveling with a toddler is messy, so laundry in-unit is pretty important.  Traveling in general is expensive, and cutting down on meal costs would be AWESOME!  Our unit has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a full kitchen, and in-unit laundry.  I am so excited!  It’s not on Disn.ey grounds, but it’s very close and just getting a mile off the grounds saves so much money in accommodation costs.

So yeah – we’re going to Disn.eyw.orld, Baby… in just over two weeks!  I don’t think I’ve been this excited about anything since the FET worked back in October!*

“Can I take my blueberries with me? Yes? Then it sounds good to me, Mom!”

* I am revising this…. I haven’t been this excited since we found out that BB2/Wilson is a boy!!!!! That still takes the cake for excitement for me!

This is my contribution to the Monday Snapshot at PAIL Bloggers.  Check it out!


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All I Can Really Ask For

It’s a beautiful day outside, and I’m just waiting for Matthew to wake up so we can go out and get some fresh air, even if that fresh air is just between the car and mall to pick out a new blanket for him 🙂

It’s been a rough few weeks, it seems, and not for us personally, but for the people we know. We’ve just gotten bad news, after bad news, after bad news for three weeks now and on Sunday night, I fell apart from it all. It all started with someone our age (a childhood friend’s husband) dying from a 10 year-long battle with cancer. I don’t keep in touch with this gal, but a good friend of mine does and she’s kept me informed of the situation. Things had gotten worse and worse over the last few months and then the end finally came, and it crushed me. Thinking of a father leaving a loving wife and a 5 year-old daughter behind makes me sick to my stomach. After that, we just kept getting bad news every few days, and it shook me to my core. By last Sunday, there just wasn’t much left in me to be strong when I read about someone losing a 1 year-old. I fell apart on the sofa and told B that, “there just is too much bad stuff happening to people we know and people who our friends know.”

He agreed, but pointed out that some good things have happened too. And he’s right.

This week has been good for me. I’ve reflected on just how lucky we are that Wilson’s ultrasound was clear a few weeks ago, that we crossed into viability on Saturday (but we sure want Wilson to stay in there for a lot longer), that Matthew’s back to eating well, that my already affectionate boy is becoming even more affectionate, and that Matthew is finally back on schedule after a horrifying few days and nights dealing with DST (as I type this, he’s waking up early from his nap – HA!). It is also getting nice outside – like REALLY nice! I went out without a coat today and was perfectly comfortable. Spring is around the corner, if it isn’t here already, and this is GOOD!

We will be getting out of the house tomorrow for real – and hanging out OUTSIDE! We went on the best walks last spring and I’m hoping we can do that again this spring. I’m not sure that Matthew will tolerate the stroller like he did last year, but we’re going to try. I love being outside, and I can feel the opportunity knocking on my door. It’s killing me that the mornings aren’t warm enough to take our walks, given that Matthew naps 2.5 hours each day starting at 1:00, eating up much of the afternoon.

My pregnancy with Wilson (I don’t think we’ll be using that name – sigh) is going really well, and quickly. This baby is WAY more active than Matthew ever was. Matthew moved a lot – from side to side – but he never did flips and huge movements. I remember wondering when he would flip on me, causing that roller coaster feeling in my stomach that people talked about. It never happened.  I suppose with a short cord, you can’t do much in there but move from side to side. I think Wilson has plenty of cord because he’s flipping and moving around all the time. I now know what it feels like to have my bladder danced on for minutes on end.  Matthew carried high, with his head in my rib cage the whole time. Wilson seems just a bit lower, and gets around in there so I never know where I’m going to feel him next. He keeps me guessing. Dr. H says that he is going to be our wild man 😉

B keeps reminding me that Wilson is going to make his appearance in late June and that we have a lot of work to do before he gets here.  We need to move rooms around, which involves clearing out the baby store-room downstairs (where all the plastic baby stuff goes to wait for the next baby) to make room for another baby upstairs.  We are torn about what to do – move Matthew into the new room (which was my plan) or let him keep his room and put Wilson in the new room.  Matthew loves his room and we hate moving him out of there, but we also think he’ll want a big boy theme sooner than not and we have that all ready for him (camping and nature hikes).  We just don’t know what to do – and I’m dragging my feet clearing out the baby store-room.  It’s going to be a lot of work and I want to do it when I can devote a lot of time to it – not just an hour here and there.

I’m getting excited about Wilson coming to live with us!  It’s starting to feel more real and I do catch myself daydreaming about the day he’s born and introducing him to his big brother.  I wonder what he’ll look like and how big he’ll be, and if he’ll be calm like his brother or a wild man, like Dr. H is predicting!

Spring has a way of making me feel optimistic and hopeful, and I’m just so grateful for it!  I needed this.  I needed to get out of my stupid funk.  With the late snowstorms, cold temperatures, sad news, and gloomy skies, it was hard for me to NOT waste time on stupid things.  It’s time to be active again, and enjoy the outdoors!  We’ve spent far too long indoors this year (by this time last year, walks were a normal part of our days) and it’s time to get out!

I’m not sure that spring has quite sprung here just yet, but it’s spring-ing, and that’s all I can really ask for!

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The Monday Snapshot – Keeps Us Guessing in the Food Department

With Matthew, you never know what he’s going to eat. Some days, he loves grilled (never, EVER fried) chicken, some days, he refuses it. Most days though, I think he’d rather have anything OTHER THAN grilled chicken because that’s all he ever gets when we eat out (this, of course, does not include Pane.ra salad chicken, which he NEVER refuses). What’s so aggravating to me is that I always box up the refused ($6) chicken and bring it home, in hopes he’ll eat it later.  And sometimes he does, and most times, he does not. When he refuses it, it becomes chicken for my spinach salad which works out great… but even I get tired of grilled chicken ;)Today was one of those days when I wanted to GET.OUT.OF.THE.HOUSE for lunch, but we had so many leftovers in the fridge that it made no sense.  I mean, really, what is so good out that is worth letting food go bad?  NOTHING.   We had leftover pizza from my cousin’s visit Wednesday night (too old – needed to be tossed), leftovers from Matthew’s lunch on Friday (you guessed it – un-touched grilled chicken), AWESOME leftovers from Friday’s dinner out (NY strip of B’s, and veggie pizza of mine – yes – it had gluten), and veggie leftovers from last night’s dinner (mashed sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli).

I figured that Matthew would want the steak. I figured right! He ate all of the broccoli before I even got to the table and was working on the steak before I gave him the mashed sweet potatoes.  We can’t give mashed cauliflower, sweet potatoes, or parsnips to him at the same time as the other food that we desperately want him to eat, or he’ll just focus on the mashed yummies.  HA!  After he finished his first helping of steak, I gave him more steak and also the mashed sweet potatoes – and he didn’t leave a single bite of the veggies for me to even try. I think he ate probably 4 ounces or so of steak – it was ALL gone.

"Finally something DIFFERENT! Yumm!!"

“Finally something DIFFERENT! Yumm!!”

And then? He ate the rest of the chicken that I was munching on.  He asked for it, I let him try it, and then he signed for more.  I just don’t get it… but I’ll take it!  He can refuse his cod tonight – that’s just fine – because he has had plenty of meat for the day!  But I do have high hopes for the cod (B is a master when it comes to cooking fish!).

"We need to go to the store after this, because this does NOT count as fruit. But I'm going to eat it as my dessert anyway!"

“We need to go to the store after this, because this does NOT count as fruit. But I’m going to eat it as my dessert anyway!”

This is my contribution to The Monday Snapshot over at PAIL Bloggers.  There are lots of cute posts today – check them out!


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The Monday Snapshot – Laundry Day

One of my favorite things in the world is this:

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This is how we dry all of the jeans in our house – and seeing this once a week makes my heart happy.  I love nothing more than a cute little boy in a pair of jeans!  Matthew wears jeans every.single.day and I love it.  My friends tease me that he always looks like a snappy little man, ready to go out on some social event (which, he usually is – he is his father’s child after all!).  I don’t know what it is about jeans on this kid, but I look forward to picking out his clothes every day and seeing his cute little butt in whatever jeans I pick out!

I am excited that Wilson will get to wear all of these jeans too.  We both buy jeans for this boy, because we both love seeing him in them, so we have a lot for Wilson to get use out of.  As we’ve bought them over the last 20+ months, I’ve wondered if we’re wasting money, but apparently not.  Truth be told, I would put most of them on a girl too, but it’s fun knowing that another little boy’s cute butt is going to fill them out before I know it!

This is part of PAIL’s Monday Snapshot.  Head on over and check out the cute kids to brighten your Monday!


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Finding Himself (AKA Major Defiance)

It’s only 2:50 and it’s been a day.  Matthew is teething like crazy – drool down his shirt constantly, fussy tantrums at the drop of a hat, refusal to eat food that isn’t super soft.  We had a rather fussy weekend and we weren’t sure if it was just him getting to know himself more (that’s my nice way of saying, becoming defiant) or if it was his teeth.

It’s both.

Matthew is in pain – that is clear.  I can see his canine teeth on both the top and bottom trying to come through, and I can’t imagine how awful that feels.  I try not to medicate him during the day – I’d rather not if he can get through it.  Today though?  I dosed him at 12:00 so it would be nice and soaked into his system by 1:00.  I delayed his nap a while because he FINALLY stopped crying and settled down to CG back in our bedroom while I ate pizza.  YES – it’s that bad of a day that I ate PIZZA for god’s sake.  In my defense (is there really a defense for such an offense?), I have wanted pizza for weeks now and it just had to be done – so why not on a day when it would feel like a justified reward?

It was good.  And worth it.  (So was the Diet Pe.psi!)

We learned over the weekend what Matthew’s new favorite thing IN.THE.WHOLE.WORLD is and it’s causing quite a problem for us.  Twice now, we’ve let him ride in my lap just a block from the neighbors’ to our house, and he loves this beyond belief.  Now he wants to get in the front seat all the time.  If you take him out to the car to load him up, he throws an absolute fit if he can’t sit in the front seat first and push some buttons.  This happens at home, at the grocery store, EVERYWHERE.

I let him knock himself out yesterday while B talked with our neighbor out front.  Matthew found the buttons to open the garage doors and turn on the dome lights.  This kept him busy for a long time and resulted in a major fit when the time came to load him up in his seat.  He freaked out again when we were coming home from our friends’ house.  And last night, B took him out to the garage just to play in the car because he wanted him to have something fun to do.  This resulted in a colossal melt down when they came back in the house.

I felt so bad for Matthew and his teeth today that I let him play in the front seat after we came home from Tar.get.  He hated being in his car seat, in the cart, and back in his car seat so I thought I’d give him something fun to do.  Did I NOT learn from B’s experience last night?  Apparently not.  While playing, he was at his happiest.  Upon coming inside, he had a melt down of mammoth proportions.

So teeth or “finding himself?”  I think we’re dealing a bit more with “finding himself” than teeth right now, but I’ll continue to blame it on teething in hopes that this phase quickly disappears.  I don’t know how much more I can take.  His fits just make me so sad and all I want to do is hug him and make it all better, but I can’t do that.  I need to set and stick to boundaries.  It’s killing me.

This is hard stuff.  Staying home is great and all, but it’s not always a picnic!  Some days are really hard to get through lately and I just wish his damned teeth would pop through so that we can put THAT behind us for now.

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The Monday Snapshot – Rare Photo!

Matthew has become difficult to photograph.  He’s not uncooperative, per se, but he just won’t pose anymore like he used to.  He’s just too busy!  I caught a RARE, genuine smile on camera yesterday and I was THRILLED!  Here it is!

A grand smile resulting from Daddy kisses!

A grand smile resulting from Daddy kisses!

 

Check out the Monday Snapshot over at PAIL Bloggers for more cute photos of cute kids!