Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Maxwell silver hammer and Maggie story teller extroidinaire

Miss Shehara, I am smart.
Is it smart for you to come up and tell me that?

Miss Shehara, your handwriting is so much better than mine, could you write this for me please?

Miss Tejani, I know how to read, just ask my mom. You go help xyz because he doesn't know how to.

Yes this is my son. The first two things were said to his teacher this year already. The last when he was still in preschool. Too many people have told Max that he is smart and he now believes the hype. I like his teacher because she is pretty tough on him. She lets him know that just because he has a brain doesn't mean it won't rot if he doesn't use it.

I know this will be a slight tangent but I have noticed that people say Max is smart and Maggie is pretty. I really don't like it. It's not like they say them in the same breath but I worry that somehow she is going to think that pretty is more important than brainy. She is so smart and so creative. She tells the best stories, they drive Max crazy which makes them even better. lol. I try and make sure that she understands how smart she is. Heck, the girl loves to keep us in the dark about how much she truly knows. Just like her stories mess with Max, she likes to mess with us.

I look forward to seeing how she does at school and seeing if she will let her teachers in on the secret so we can find out.

An ode to time outs and keeping your cool

My hormones must be in a happy place the last few days for the most part because not only have time outs worked but I have mostly kept my cool. Yes, I did write mostly. I can't be expected to be level headed all the time. We are talking about my high energy children. I went back to using time outs with a timer and putting the kids where I want to put them not necessarily in one spot. I think that I am actually keeping my cool better or something. I am not sure what has changed at the moment but whatever it is, I am grateful for it. And I know the kids will be as well.
I really want to try and get back to being a nice person to all.
For whatever reason, time outs have been working. I, also, went back to the rules and really trying to keep it simple. Be kind and you hit you sit. They go along way. It seems to be working. Yes, mornings are still not that great. Max doesn't get that 5 am is not the time to wake us all up. He says he got lonely the last two mornings so that is why he woke Maggie up. Then poor Maggie starts to have a rough day. Thank goodness for naps.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How do single parents do it

And not go crazy? Yesterday after I had picked Max up from school and dropped Maggie off at dance, we went home. Let me preface by saying that Max, as far as I know, did not drink one drop of liquid the entire time he was at school. I can't say for sure but I do know that he did not drink any water from his bottle.
We get home. He wants a snack, so he grabs a pop tart (I know healthy, right? At least it is organic. lol somehow my justification that it is all right). He drinks some water and complains of a headache, I am figuring it is dehydration so I suggest he drink more water. We go pick Maggie up and he is close to up chucking the goods. This is the worst part, there was teeny weeny baby in there. We didn't stay long and he didn't go near the babe but still...
We get home and he is really hurting, crying and at some point he is on his way to the bathroom when he lets loose. (Now thank goodness, Maggie has a stomach of steel). I get the floor cleaned up and she helps me wipe it afterwards. Max gets to the pot in time to unload some more. We check for fever, none. I have lay down with a cool washcloth on his head and he goes to sleep.
In the meantime, where is Harry, you ask? Yes he is on the floor complaining loudly about how he is on his belly and can't quite figure out how to get to his back. I think Juno was watching him, I know, I know. You are never supposed to leave a baby and dog alone in the room. I do think though that Juno thinks he is his because he is forever trying to bathe Harry with his tongue.
Ah yes now I remember where the edge was and how I tipped Max over. I gave him watered down gatorade. That put him over.
Next I tried to make him some chicken and rice soup, out of can people, no time plus I believe he actually needed some of the salt. While he was sleeping, Maggie and I had franks and beans with texas toast. Yes we were oh so healthy with our dinner. Maggie goes off to watch a little tv. I settle down to nurse the little man, heck I probably should have given Max some of my milk... but oh well don't want him traumatized in later life. Harry conked for a bit so I thought I would put him in the crib. This gave me enough time to get pjs for Maggie. I thought I would try taking Max to his bed. That did not work. He came back down. I tried to give him soup and crackers. Guess what the crackers were bad so it made things worse. The whole time he was not talking just crying crying crying to the point where I was about to cry because I did not know what to do to help him. And of course, by now, Harry is back downstairs because he only catnapped. Max convinces me to get him medicine for the headache. That again was the final straw. This time however I got smart and had a bowl there just in case. This time I settled him back on the couch let him know I was taking Harry up to bed. Got Harry settled. Max was passed out by this time. I took Maggie up and read to her and got her settled. I just left Max until 9pm on the couch and then carried him up. It was rough getting pulled in 3 directions without my partner in crime who had a business dinner.
So to all you single parents my hats off because it was tough trying to care for the needs of all of the kids.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Lazy Sunday kind of...

Last week, Krismon asked if I wanted to go camping Saturday night. Someone at Zappos got the big campsite on Mt. Charleston and we haven't gotten to go camping at all this summer. duh? right. Well unfortunately, at this time of the year, it gets cold at night up on the mtn. He decided to take the older kids and Harry and I would stay home. I thought, ahhh, I will finally get a good night's sleep. Krismon borrowed an rv from a friend of ours as a just in case. In case, I wanted to go with Harry and just snuggle down in there or if they needed to use it that night. They got up there but I guess there were problems. Krismon called me to let me know that I would need to come and drive the kids home. This was not exactly the relaxing morning at home that I was picturing. Oh well I got what I needed mostly. I ate a sub sandwich, got Harry to bed, drank a beer while watching two shows and got to bed super duper early. Harry wouldn't have woken up if Juno hadn't started barking at the darn cats that like to go in our backyard at night and torture all of us. Luckily he went back to sleep until 6. I got to drink a little coffee, eat some breakfast, take a shower before heading up the hill to get the kids. Juno came along for the ride and was he ever happy. The drive went surprisingly quick. Harry slept, thank goodness!
At the campsite, Juno was so happy to wander, hang with the other dogs, generally get some outdoors time. And what is really nice is that he comes back when called!!!! I am not used to having a dog like that. Harry decided that yesterday was the day to unload about 4 days worth of poo in one diaper. It wasn't a pretty sight but I was so excited for him. I can't imagine keeping that much inside but I know that with breastfed babies they can go longer and not have it mean anything. I am just used to my superpoopers. They were both pretty regular, Maggie is very regular. I know tmi but whatever back to the story...
The kids had a great time, there were two other kids there one each their age so they had buds to play with. Poor Krismon though had to deal with Max waking up at 4am. He kept him quiet until 6. Then Maggie woke up as well so he herded them into the rv for another hour before starting breakfast. I missed a great breakfast from what I know. French toast among other things. We stayed a few more hours and then headed home. Max passed out in the car, Harry cried for a good 20 minutes of the drive. Maggie and I sang the ZYX song (abc song backwards) trying to serenade Harry into a better mood. It did end up helping.
Max stayed asleep for a good 4 hours, Maggie and Krismon took a two hour nap. Harry napped most of the afternoon. After everyone woke, I vacuumed the whole house. Not relaxing but I do feel so much better about having cleaner floors.
I am going to stop there before I bore you even more....

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Just when you think

Ahhh they go and switch things up. Harry made great strides by learning to turn over to one side from his back to his front. Now, all of a sudden, he wanting to turn over from his back to his front from the other side. He is so frustrated that he ends up crying out as if in pain. I believe it is more mental anguish than anything. But I have this theory that because of these changes that he is trying to make that he is having more difficulty sleeping or he is starting to his new sleep stages and I am just clueless at the moment. Either way, he went from.... sleeping through the night for a few weeks to suddenly up twice a night and the second time he wants to stay up. Now this is just the second day but it does scare me a bit that he isn't going back to sleep like he did before this if he did indeed get up at night to nurse. ARGH 4-5 is not a proper wake up time. But at least I can understand a baby having a difficult time registering that.

Now Max on the other hand, he has been hard hard hard hard to deal with on this issue. Yes, I know that 5 is still a child and a young child at that. But he can read a clock, he knows what the sound of an alarm is but chooses instead to ignore all of that and bother everyone in the family. I am at a huge loss as to what to do to impress on him that it isn't respectful to wake others up nor is it very nice. Yesterday he decided that 4am was as good a time as any to get everyone up. Luckily, Maggie was willing to go back to sleep until 6am. (Side note- she is starting to realize that she doesn't want to be in trouble like Max nor does she want Max to be in trouble either). Need less to say, Max's day at school was less than stellar. He actually screamed in class, thankfully it wasn't the teacher that actually had to deal with that. It was his older classmates. AH I love Montessori where they have a couple of ages in each classroom. The older classmates spoke to Max about his actions and behaviour. And they did it a great job of it. I am big on the village besides having kids tell another kid in a nice way that their behaviour isn't okay is a more teachable moment than having an adult do the same.

But any other suggestions for getting Max to stay in his bed until 6am and not waking his sister up before then please let me know.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Gap Casting Call




I did it. I signed up to get more junk emails to my junk email address because I find my kids to be so uber cute. Yeah I know. I fantasize about their college education being paid for by a few gigs of modeling in which we end up with great photos that we can hang on our wall in beautiful frames. And then get them away before modeling and fame can warp their young and oh so impressionable minds. I know this is just a dream but please don't burst my bubble too soon.

So gooooooo voooteeeee pretty please with sugar on top.

http://family.go.com/gapcastingcall/entries/hidjbo/

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Tyng shoes and Lotus of Siam

What do these two things have to do with each other... Nothing.

You know there are milestones that you notice but you could shoot yourself for not remembering the exact date that they did this or that. Honestly, this is one of those. Last week, Max, after having been shown how to tie his shoes, has mastered it. I am not saying that he ties them tightly but he ties them well and even double knots them. It's pretty cool. And it doesn't hurt that they are converse which he wore in a wedding this summer. :) It is one of those rights of passage events. It brings a little more independence in his life and means he is stepping further away from that young young childhood. Heck, now I am about to cry thinking about it.

Okay must move on.... Yesterday was one of those day. Everything was one off. I should have put Harry down for a nap before trying to exercise. At this point, I don't remember if I did and it didn't work or what but he ended up in the swing. By minute 22, he was sending baby daggers with his eyes. I kept saying, please I am almost done. Regardless, I got him down for his nap and he slept for an hour I would say but I think that was the start of my trouble. My parents and their friends were blowing through town on their road trip and we were going to see them and have lunch. Well, I figured I would see them before getting Maggie from school. Through no fault of theirs, they just took longer to get going and get out of their hotel and to our house. So after visiting for a bit and then heading out to get some pizza before they were on the road again, we got back home at 2pm. This is too late for Maggie to get a nap, Harry was having a bad car day. Okay at this point, can you tell my nerves were getting shot?... So I drive to pick up Max at 3pm and there is no spot to park. They changed their sign in, sign out policy. You are supposed to sign in and out with the teacher in their room. For whatever reason, this has created havoc. Honestly, I wish they would go back to the old way with binders at the front. Okay so we get home. I have to let Max know that he wasn't going to see his grandparents. And really, he took that well surprisingly. He was happy to get a piece of the pizza for snack and to know that he would get to see Allison that evening. She has been the greatest babysitter. Allison comes at 6:30. Krismon doesn't get home til almost 7. Harry was having difficulty going down for the night, Thank GOD Krismon took over getting Harry down. And then we were off....

AHHHHH Lotus of Siam... This is truly one of the best restaurants in the country. I sat there for a bit with our friends Nick and Mike and over the course of dinner felt my shoulders drop little by little. Just getting to talk and laugh was really nice. The wonderful aspect of this restaurant is that you don't need to look at the menu. In fact don't look at the menu. When they ask to take your order, you just say whatever the chef is doing special for the night. And if you have the money for it... get the lobster! They were out, actually I think there was a table that ordered the last one so that we missed out. It was sad moment, we mourned for a minute and then moved on. They brought out a wonderful Sea Bass soup as well as a beef salad and some sort of other appetizer. They were good and then some curry shrimp, yummy duck, more sea bass and another beef dish. Yummy and a nice Riesling to cut the heat. When we left, I noticed how much better I felt for the time away from the house and kids. It was nice to get away so necessary for me yesterday.

So if you don't live here but plan to visit anytime in the near future and you like Thai food... you need to go there but be warned that you must must must make a reservation. And the best part of the adventure, it is in a semi sketchy area so you will be thinking huh how could it be here and then once you eat the food, you won't care.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Breakfast in Bed


Yes that is right. Max has been wanting to make us breakfast in bed. Yesterday he was talking about it, but I didn't think about it too much. Can you imagine my surprise? Maggie came into the room at about 5:50 and I told her she needed to wait until 6 for me to feed her. She came in and out of the room a few times.
Needless to say now that Harry is turning over, he got upset three times last night having turned over. The first time around 11:30pm. Then sometime after midnight, I had Krismon go up and just turn him over. And then around 4:20am, again he woke up. I went up so he could have the special sauce as well.
I did have the thought that murphys law would strike and the kids would get up extra early but they were gracious to an extent. Max did wake Maggie up but luckily it wasn't too early. And then he did make up for it by making us our breakfast in bed. It was pretty wow. And smart. He got an oven tray, spread pb on two pieces of bread and added raisins. That is his secret recipe! lol And then he got two little bowls with cereal, two small spoons and added two cups of milk that we could either drink or pour into our bowls. I intercepted the two on their way into our room. I got the tray on the table and each received a hug and thank you. It really was such a nice surprise. Especially since they sometimes have a difficult time realizing that the rest of the world is not awake and it might be nice to put a filter on their general enthusiasm. They were quiet in their mission and they made it happen using teamwork. It really was a nice way to start the morning.

Monday, September 21, 2009

19lbs!

Harry is not even 4 months old. In fact, he will not be 4 months old until Oct. 3rd. Krismon did the weight test yesterday. It's incredible how much he has grown since he was born. The other two didn't approach those numbers for a while. It's great. We already had to push his exersaucer up one because his feet were flat. He is rolling over and holding his head up more.

Maggie is as tall as a 4 yo that we met at a birthday party on Saturday. She is getting used to preschool and slowly making friends. She loves dance. It's fun to see her so excited in her dance class.

Max is liking elementary after the initial week. He gets to garden and and look at bugs under a microscope. And he is happy that Maggie is finally going to his school.

That's the update.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

My newest plan

So the kids are still not waking up at 6am. Are you wondering if that means they are waking up later? Nope, I would really love for them to actually stay asleep until that time. Maggie was really a good sleeper until we put her in the room with Max. We were hoping that she would rub off on him. Nope, it backfired and made her a worse sleeper.

We have an alarm set in their room for 6. All the books say that it should work, hmm what do books know... They don't know my kids.

So now that Max knows how to write and Maggie is learning to write I figured might as well reinforce their learning...

Max is copying sentences 5 times while Maggie has to write the number 6 over and over again.

I will not wake my parents up until the 6am alarm unless I am sick.
I will not wake up my sister.
I will not wake up my brother.
I will go back to sleep until 6am.
My sleep is important.
My brother's sleep is important.
My sister's sleep is important.
My parent's sleep is important.

You get the drift. Each day that it happens, I am adding a new sentence. And until he does this no breakfast. I know mean mom, right? I am hoping that at some point, he will begin to understand that he is the one choosing to have these things happen. It's really sad because his lack of sleep directly affects his behavior towards us and his sister. And my lack of sleep doesn't help me to behave as well as I should either.

It looks like we might have to put them in separate rooms as well. I will say that the separate bedtimes has made a huge difference. Plus I am enjoying reading Harry Potter to Max. I really want him to use his imagination to create pictures in his head of what Hogwarts looks like etc. Once we finish the first book, I think we will watch the movie together.

I know this has been a bit disjointed but ah well.

Friday, September 18, 2009

On a roll

Wouldn't that be funny? Somehow in writing that I had this mental picture of me on a breadroll. Kind of like a Lily Tomlin rocking chair kind of breadroll. I like taking it old school. Anyone?....

Back to school night for Max and Maggie was on Wednesday. They had a speaker, a diagnostician (lord help me that I spelled that right) who helps with the curricula. I believe he was probably supposed to speak for at most 20 minutes. Nah he decided he needed to lecture us on how to raise our children for around 40 minutes. He did know that we were in a private christian Montessori school because we are concerned about the educational system here in Vegas? And that we decided that we wanted God in the classroom? To me it seems pretty clear that most of us have our kids best interests at heart. Now please don't misunderstand, the public schools are as good if you are really involved in your kids education. And actually that is my plan this year. If I am needed, I am going to volunteer in the class since they have no problem having me bring in Harry.
Also, I am a product of a great public educational system in Iowa. Krismon is a mixed bag since in the Philippines the Catholic schools are the really good schools but then he went to public schools in CA and had really great teachers. Actually I am a little jealous because he had teachers that worked for NASA and other companies in the area that volunteered to teach courses at his High School. How cool is that? But I digress. hmm like my little tangent. So this guy, lectures us for 40 minutes at least and keeps couching everything by saying that we can take his advice or leave it but that his one daughter is a professor and his only son a broadcaster and his other daughter is in college at this very moment.
Why is it that we don't have the (fill in the blank) to just get up and leave when it starts to get old? Anyways after it was done, we got to meet their teachers. I really like Max's teacher. She will challenge him but he is already enjoying class more. They are going to garden and they are looking at bugs under the microscope. I didn't meet Maggie's teacher, Krismon did. Maggie is a little timid right now because she doesn't know everyone. I know Maggie timid, shy, crazy huh? I figure before the year is out, she will be ruling the kids. lol.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Shall we try again

Yes we shall. I started this two days ago and yet it is still unpublished because I don't feel capable of writing something cohesive. Maybe that is the problem, maybe I need to give up the idea that I am going to be cohesive for a while.

Okay so here goes. Harry rolled from back to front on Wednesday 9/16/09 around 9:40am as I was doing Ab Ripper X. Yep that is right. It is the only one that I have done so far from P90X but it is a start. Harry got into the spirit of the video and did his own crunches. He was baby swearing as well as screaming to get the job done. Then there was the inevitable... 'hell, what do I do now that I just got myself here, MOM!'

Phew I think that is all I got for brain power right now.