Good ol' Sundays

I love sundays!!! Despite daylight savings time, I just really enjoyed giong to church today! Eric woke up not feeling to well...... (don't be alarmed anyone.... you know how boys are...... SUCH big babies when they're sick....... and he was over the sickness by the time I got home) Well, I just left Peyton at home with Eric. Not only does Eric and Peyton ALWAYS need more bonding time but I was in charge of sharing time for the first time in my LIFE and was a tad nervous about it. Peyton STILL refuses to go into nursery(we have to sit in there with him) So I usually take care of my calling duties then sit 2nd hour in nursery with him. Eric teaches gospel principles 2nd hour but comes in 3rd hour to be with him. We try countless, countless countless ways to leave him in there but no matter what we do, the nursery leaders are always bringing a "out of control" "sad as can be" "hysterically crying" baby to us if we're gone for more than 10 minutes. So anyway, it was going to put a damper of my whole sharing time because I would have to have Peyton for 2nd and 3rd hour if Eric wasn't there and it all just seemmed like a little much for me today.

Ya know what, I reallllyyyyy enjoyed doing sharing time. Believe it or not, it is intimidating standing in front of a bunch of kids to do a lesson. Well, we did a prophet/apostle matching game today and it went great! And it was a double bonus because when I got home, I wanted Peyton to get his spiritualness for the day so we watched some music videos on lds.org then he went to town on my prophet/apostle matching board from sharing time!!!!!!!!!!!

Pregnancy

wooooeeeeee.... thanks for allowing me my "pregnancy rant" yesterday! HAha...... but really, I do rant a LOT more when pregnant. Speaking of pregnancy.... that's what I want to blog about today!
I have a hate/love relationship with being pregnant. Of course I LOVE having a little human being inside my stomach and most moments I'm just overcome with the miracle of it all. I LOVE feeling my baby move inside..... that's my most favorite! I love using it as an excuse for everything.... so I was grumpy with my husband (hormones from pregnancy), I can blame eating habits on cravings, the wonderful "I'm eating for two" thing.
I dont' particularly like getting this fat. I know I could control it a lot more than I do but third trimester I just feel HUGE. I feel like my oxygen supply is depleted when I bend down to put on socks, I feel a need to let out a HUGE grunt everytime I bend down because again, it cuts off my oxygen supply. When pregnant with Peyton, I felt soooo beautiful! Even at my biggest, I just felt so pretty. Well, looking aback at all those pictures I took of those maternity days I think, "uggghhhh, for reals. Was I blind? I'm sooooo HUGE." So this go round I'm not taking too many pics but still, there is a really beautiful thing about being pregnant. I still feel pretty..... whether I really look it or not.
I'm going to give a quick rundown of this pregnancy with my little girl...... mostly for preserving memories sake!!!
We'd planned this pregnancy down to the minute... haha. But really, we had a month opening for getting pregnant. We have a cruise planned January 2013 and my baby has to be at least 6 months old. So that gave us one month........ we were in the middle of a move, and switching insurances which gave us that window. Well, after peeing on that little stick and seeing that positive I was STOKEEEEDDDDD to the moon and back. I started screaming adn screaming.... Peyton and Eric were in our bedrrom "waiting for the result" and I came out dancing. Let's just say I did a happy dance for a long time. Eric gave me a big hug and Peyton just sat there staring like, "WHAT THE......"
This pregancy has gone sooooooo much quicker than my first. Time has flown!!!! First trimester I stayed away from all sweets and most fruits adn yogurts. For some reason, "sweets" made me really sick and nauseous. We love eating pancakes with syrup for breakfast all the time but that was a big NO NO for first tri. OOOOHHHHH gosh, I can't tell you how sick that would make me.
2nd tri came around and I was able to eat sweets and stuff again. And all of a sudden I was bursting with energy.... which gratefully still hasn't gone away and I'm at week 29. Man, I loved 2nd tri..... although I hate that period when you just look like you've gained weight and noone wants to say anything..... that whole awkwardness. Halfway through 2nd tri though I started cramping up severely. It really really really really freaked me out. I couldn't even wakl somedays because I'd be cramping adn contracting so much it just hurt too much. YIKES! Long story short, I was dehyrated. The doc says that the cramps and contractions were my body's way of trying to expel whatever was taking my water supply.... which in this case was my sweet little baby!!!!!! Sooooo grateful we figured that out pronto because dehyration can cause pre-term labor which is the road I was oging on. So I drink ALLLLL the time now, and peeee all the time.
2nd tri we also had our ultrasound to determine gender!!!!!!! LOVEEEE that appt! The lady who did the ultrasound was new so she was taking forever which you know I loved!! Then a second ultrasound tech came in to make sure the first lady did it all right.... then we had the doctor come in and recheck everything. That appt was a good hour just getting to watch my baby on the screen!!! The first gal told us we were having a boy at first........ Eric and I looked at each other of course excited. But a coupel minutes later she realized it was just the umbilical cord in the way. IT'S A GIRL!!! Oh man, then we were ecstatic!! One of each! Even better, our baby was healthy as could be.... and what a mover!!!!!! Maybe that's why the appt took soo long too, she would just wiggle wiggle wiggle.
3rd tri heralded in my acid reflux...... uugghhhhh. So I wake up about twice a night for my tums and another 6 times to go pee. hahah. The joys of pregnancy. I'm starting to PUFF up at night too. Can't wear hair tyes aroun my wrist or it cuts off the circulation to my hands.... and my wedding ring is the next thing to go. Eric does give me foot massages frequently though...... I"m soooo lucky!!
Our second scare came when I thought I was leaking amniotic fluid...... thankfully it was just an infection!!!
I feel sooo good righ tnow though. My morning is jam packed with energy and gusto and my nights I'm totally crashing but lucky I get lots done in the mornings and afternoon.
We are sooooooo excited for this little girl! I can't wait to have her here in my arms. I'm just ready to cuddle and kiss on her every second of my day. Soooo excited for Peyton to have a little sibling to love on. I know he'll be such a great big brother. Right now, he rubs my belly softly and says "Beebee." then kisses my belly. Ummmm, tear tear. too cute for words.
Feel so grateful for the blessing of my kids everyday!!!

Just say NO

So...... something that really weighs on my mind all the time is "wanting to do right by my children." For pete's sake, my husband and I were the ones who chose to bring another soul into the world. I want my children to be a good contribution to society (respectful to all adults, and all that good stuff). So many kids these days are soooooo disrespectful but in my opinion, parents are the ones who enable that behavior. I'm a BIG advocate in "NO means NO." I can't tell you how many parents I've seen that tell their children NO just to have the kids do what they want anyway. For example, the latest example of this.... I saw a mother tell her child, "no they can't have dessert before dinner." Well, next thing you know, icecream is out on the counter and they've dished themselves up a HUGE dish of icecream. I didn't want to be meddlesome and assert myself into somebody else's business so I kept my mouth shut. When teh parent saw what the child had done, they calmly said, "I thought I told you no. Fine, you can have one scoop."
WHAT THE.......??? Didn't you say no????? No wonder the child was just dishing themselves up icecream anyway. They've learned that no doesn't really mean no, it just means do it anyway and mom or dad will cave in and let you in the end.
Now, let me just say I understand this is a really hard thing to do. You don't want to be a bad guy that always is punishing and saying no. Trust me, I don't want to be the bad guy either!!! I just think that I'd be doing my kids such a disservice by being so lenient.
Lately I've been doing my best to apply this lesson in my own parenting stuff. It's soooo much harder than it seems. I didn't even really start being hard-hearted about the word NO until I thought Peyton was old enough to understand the concept. So at about 18 months I figured I'd start "meaning NO." Oh gosh, gives me a headache just thinking about it. So he'd want a third glass of chocolate milk....... "NO." Oh myyyyyy, he'd cry and cry and cry and cry. And I admit, I couldn't handle it at the beginning. I'd justify in my own mind..... chocolate milk really isn't worth such a fuss..... and, well chocolate milk is healthy.... what kind of mom am I for not allowing him his calcium and vitamin d from the milk for the day.? And the list goes on, so I'd end up giving him that glass of milk. So obviously, I'd made the problem worse even before I'd begun "saying No" for sure.
Peyton definitely is not stupid and he knew that if he put up enough of a tantrum I'd say ok. And I would.
When I realized what I was doing........ my mindset went back to that hardhearted mom who says NOOOO and means it. We had a lot of tantrums around here for awhile, and I learned to just ignore him. And finally....... today when he wanted another fruit leather strip for a snack I told him no and he was ok with that. I guess he figured throwing a tantrum wouldn't be worth it because it wouldnt' get him the snack in the end. HALLELUJAH!! I may or may not have hugged his cute little body for being ok with NO and smothered him with kisses for being so proud!!!
I'm definitely not super good at it yet and occasionally I'll give in to his screams but I want to be better!!!!! So I'm going to live by the motto, "JUST SAY NO," for the next couple weeks to get this ingrained in our family. I Bre, vow to not give in when he wants something at the grocery store and starts throwing a tantrum that tottaaaallllyyy embarrasses the heck out of me. I vow to say NO and mean it!!! Yes, yes I do!!!
Oh, except for when we fly on the airplane to Utah...... trust me, I'll give him ANYTHING he wants. As long as he's quiet and sits still....... and I'm not ashameddd.......

Smashing eggshells

Peyton's new favorite activity...... smashing egg shells. I got this idea YET again from Pinterest. You just wash out the egg shells with soap adn water, let em' dry and WAH LA! Peyton was a little confused at first because he's always trying to grab the eggs and "help" when I'm cooking breakfast and I move them out of reach but here I was giving him a whole bowl of shells on purpose. He got the hang of it quick though.... he loved smashing them! This kid goes till he drops. At the end of the day, if there's any blanket lying around, he'll grab it and just hunker down for the night (kitchen, living room, bathroom, wherever he wants).

Peyton has a new fear folks. There we were.... a couple minutes after going to the grocery store..... I was in the kitchen putting some groceries away and filling the sink to do a load of dishes when all of a sudden, Peyton lets out a blood-curdling scream!!!! I'm pretty darn good at discerning between his cries and his screams and what they mean and I'm telling you.... I know this scream meant that he was super scared. He runs into the kitchen..... when he'd gotten done screaming I kept asking him what was wrong. "Did you see a bug?" "Did you hear a scary noise?" "Did you think momma left you?" To all my questions he let out a long, loud GROWWWLLLL! He kept pointing to the living room and growling over and over. So I went to see what was so scary.... and I'm telling you, no wonder he was scared.... I became a little scared myself.....
HaHa!! A bear, right in our own living room! Man, I cracked up.... I had to go hide it so he'd quit screaming and growling.



Now on to the braggin section of my post for the day....... I'm telling you... I'm a super mom/super wife lately! I've been on this super big cooking spree/cleaning the house till it shines/doing fun stuff with peyton spree! It's been awesome!!! I've made some darn good things for dinner lately.... all thanks to Pinterest. And a couple days ago I made caramel flan. Holy toledo right? Yeah, be impressed! That same evening we all made cookies as a family (which always turns into a "tornado hit the kitchen" type of thing because Eric's involved) but it was really fun and I'm glad we did it. We frosted them in honor of st. patty's day this month as well.

Maybe I'm so impressed with myself because I just am reminiscing about where and what I was doing when pregnant with Peyton. What a world of difference. We lived in Maryland at the time, and I found out I was pregnant a month before I finished beauty school. I already had a job lined up for me at a high end, fancy salon and ended up not working there after all. You see, no matter what salon I started at, it's a place that they expect you to take a month maternity leave and come back to work. Well, I had no plans to return to work as I'd been planning on being a stay at home mom. So all salons were out of the question. I knew I needed something to keep me busy for the 9 months so I applied to several different places looking for work. You name it, I applied. From McDonald's to Kohl's and everywhere in between..... but no one was hiring. I couldn't get a job anywhere. So I was a stay at home mom, even before the baby came. I had nothing to do and so I did what I could to entertain myself.
On a personal note, I was suffering from anxiety/depression. I just remember sleeping in every day till late morning..... not even wanting to get out of bed. Every day was the same, I'd watch a movies all day or read books. I had no desire or energy to do anything else. My poor husband..... I didn't cook, or clean. I'd do it occasionally on a "good day." But for the most part, he did it all. At this time, we didn't know I had depression.... I thought that pregnancy was just making me super tired and lethargic. I'll prolly write a whole post later on this whole depression stuff because it really is quite a story but to sum it up right now..... day in and day out I'd lay and sit around.

And that my friends is why I feel like I'm super mommy!