Monday, January 27, 2020
reflecting
A facebook friend posted this video the other day and I had tears rolling down my cheeks. (I can't seem to find a non-FB option, this one only has half the video). My babies are growing so fast. I feel so privileged to be their mom and to spend so much time with them, but it still just feels like it is flying by too fast.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
laying low
The first half of the weekend was good, I worked Friday but we had all day Saturday and Sunday together with not much to do so that was glorious. We had eggs and waffles both days and I got to take an afternoon nap!
I made a lot of baby food cubes this weekend. On Friday Jeanie had her 9 month appointment and while the doctor was mostly happy, she said she would have liked to see her gain another pound. She said she wants me to eat more calories so my milk is more "like whole milk". This is frustrating news as my own doctor found I have 'borderline high' cholesterol and I should be eating more low-fat! However, I think this still means can have healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, and not so much like extra butter and ice cream. Lol, bummer. Anyway, Jeanie has a full bag of green bean, pea, sweet potato, broccoli, and asparagus cubes in addition to the other little things she gets.
I had asked for a mini chopper for Christmas and in a miscommunication of asking people, I received 3 choppers! I love my Blend-Tec blender, but it does not do a good job for smaller portions like baby food.
After looking at all of them the winner ended up being the Ninja because it has a double blade. It works really well.
Saturday night we went over to our neighbor's house for dinner.
Sunday Daddy pulled August in the sled (I think that was during my nap)
Saturday night my neighbor had commented her son had been throwing up, but he was fine by dinner time. I didn't think much of it until Monday... da da dummmmm!
My boy was sick. And like many a mom-tale before me I'd heard about their children throwing up on them, it was finally my turn.
It was disgusting.
So he spent most of the morning sitting watching this little Christian bear video Boz learning letters and colors. While I washed our clothes, scrubbed the carpet, and kept Jeanie away.
Yes that is a picture of a puke pile, conveniently close to, but not in, the throw up bucket.
Even now days later I feel like I'm still smelling 'phantom puke' smell coming from somewhere. EW.
This poor boy, he felt so horrible, I felt so bad.
He has rarely napped since we took away his binky, but when he does he wants to lay on the carpet by the door for some reason. So I laid down a towel and he feel fast asleep.
He was done puking by nap time, but then he developed a fever that lasted into the night. A dose of Tylenol did the trick and he was back to his normal self by morning. Thank God! It's so sad and scary to have sick babies.
I made a lot of baby food cubes this weekend. On Friday Jeanie had her 9 month appointment and while the doctor was mostly happy, she said she would have liked to see her gain another pound. She said she wants me to eat more calories so my milk is more "like whole milk". This is frustrating news as my own doctor found I have 'borderline high' cholesterol and I should be eating more low-fat! However, I think this still means can have healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, and not so much like extra butter and ice cream. Lol, bummer. Anyway, Jeanie has a full bag of green bean, pea, sweet potato, broccoli, and asparagus cubes in addition to the other little things she gets.
I had asked for a mini chopper for Christmas and in a miscommunication of asking people, I received 3 choppers! I love my Blend-Tec blender, but it does not do a good job for smaller portions like baby food.
After looking at all of them the winner ended up being the Ninja because it has a double blade. It works really well.
Saturday night we went over to our neighbor's house for dinner.
Sunday Daddy pulled August in the sled (I think that was during my nap)
Saturday night my neighbor had commented her son had been throwing up, but he was fine by dinner time. I didn't think much of it until Monday... da da dummmmm!
My boy was sick. And like many a mom-tale before me I'd heard about their children throwing up on them, it was finally my turn.
It was disgusting.
So he spent most of the morning sitting watching this little Christian bear video Boz learning letters and colors. While I washed our clothes, scrubbed the carpet, and kept Jeanie away.
Yes that is a picture of a puke pile, conveniently close to, but not in, the throw up bucket.
Even now days later I feel like I'm still smelling 'phantom puke' smell coming from somewhere. EW.
This poor boy, he felt so horrible, I felt so bad.
He has rarely napped since we took away his binky, but when he does he wants to lay on the carpet by the door for some reason. So I laid down a towel and he feel fast asleep.
He was done puking by nap time, but then he developed a fever that lasted into the night. A dose of Tylenol did the trick and he was back to his normal self by morning. Thank God! It's so sad and scary to have sick babies.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Monday, January 6, 2020
2020 Goals
This year, for the first time, Doug and I actually sat down and made some mostly joint goals for 2020.
- Read 2 books, then discuss and apply. The books are You & Me Forever which we got as a wedding gift 5 years ago, finally started reading this last fall, and realizing there is a lot to think about and could be pretty life changing if we allow ourselves to be changed. Doug feels the same about Tactics and so we will do the same with that one.
Doug has some weight loss goals, and unfortunately I got bad news from my new primary care doctor that I have "borderline high" cholesterol :( I was pretty surprised to see that, and disappointed as I already do exercise, not smoke, and eat pretty healthfully including lots of beans and fiber. But obviously that needs to come down. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women and I want to do all I can to be healthy and fit for myself and my family's sake.
- Lower my cholesterol into normal/good range! So I plan to exercise more faithfully, eat less cheese and icecream?, add salmon weekly and vegetarian dinners 2 nights a week. And then ask my doctor for a re-check in 3-4 months?
- Dance lessons. Saw a video on facebook and it looked so fun, so we're going to do that together.
- Buy our second rental property and get it rented. We are ready on the bank end, now just waiting for something decent to come on the market!
- See a financial adviser. This one is more what I want to do than Doug necessarily. We are saving into our Roths, 401k, 403b, 529s for the kids, and the rental property plan. I just want someone, with expertise, to look over our plans and see if we need any tweaks. It haunts me that just a little something done not right now could cost us literally thousands of dollars over the years before our retirement. I've also started reading Retire Inspired, after getting it as a gift from my sister years ago, and it's helping me get more motivated. As he says in his book, the only one who will plan for my retirement is me!
- Do a 5k together.
- Walk the Mackinac Bridge.
- Talk with our neighbors about building. I cannot shake this desire to build our own home. But both my parents and best friend are building, and it is SO expensive. We found out our neighbors build theirs and kept it to about $100 a square foot, (national average is $175), but they said they did a lot themselves. So we would like to sit down with them and see how they did that and if it would be feasible for us. I think having some real numbers would help us see if we could afford it, without being too house poor. We will have our house paid off in a couple months, so in some ways it seems crazy to go from banking all this extra cash to having a medium/large mortgage for 30 years, but on the other hand would love to have a little more land/ little more space/ stay in our neighborhood. So we are at least going to start sort of pursuing it until we come to a hard 'no'.
- Learn to play a piano song. Last Christmas my dad gave me sheet music for a song I liked and I don't think I played the piano all year. After seeing Mannheim Steamroller last month I was feeling nostalgic and missing being connected to music. I used to play piano and clarinet, although neither well, but enjoyed it and could be better with some practice.
- Read through this stack of books:
My game plan is to take a book to work and on my pump breaks I will alternate working on my BSF Bible study homework one pump break, and read on the second pump break. That way I'll get in an hour a week. And it will be a better use of time than just scrolling the internet on my phone.
- Travel. We also have plans for a trip to Germany for my old host brother's wedding in September. While in Europe I hope to see at least one more country, talking with Doug about where to go and what to do. Would love to do Greece, but not sure if we have enough time to do it justice and/or if it would be too hard logistically with the kids. We shall see.
Looking forward to 2020!
- Read 2 books, then discuss and apply. The books are You & Me Forever which we got as a wedding gift 5 years ago, finally started reading this last fall, and realizing there is a lot to think about and could be pretty life changing if we allow ourselves to be changed. Doug feels the same about Tactics and so we will do the same with that one.
Doug has some weight loss goals, and unfortunately I got bad news from my new primary care doctor that I have "borderline high" cholesterol :( I was pretty surprised to see that, and disappointed as I already do exercise, not smoke, and eat pretty healthfully including lots of beans and fiber. But obviously that needs to come down. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women and I want to do all I can to be healthy and fit for myself and my family's sake.
- Lower my cholesterol into normal/good range! So I plan to exercise more faithfully, eat less cheese and icecream?, add salmon weekly and vegetarian dinners 2 nights a week. And then ask my doctor for a re-check in 3-4 months?
- Dance lessons. Saw a video on facebook and it looked so fun, so we're going to do that together.
- Buy our second rental property and get it rented. We are ready on the bank end, now just waiting for something decent to come on the market!
- See a financial adviser. This one is more what I want to do than Doug necessarily. We are saving into our Roths, 401k, 403b, 529s for the kids, and the rental property plan. I just want someone, with expertise, to look over our plans and see if we need any tweaks. It haunts me that just a little something done not right now could cost us literally thousands of dollars over the years before our retirement. I've also started reading Retire Inspired, after getting it as a gift from my sister years ago, and it's helping me get more motivated. As he says in his book, the only one who will plan for my retirement is me!
- Do a 5k together.
- Walk the Mackinac Bridge.
- Talk with our neighbors about building. I cannot shake this desire to build our own home. But both my parents and best friend are building, and it is SO expensive. We found out our neighbors build theirs and kept it to about $100 a square foot, (national average is $175), but they said they did a lot themselves. So we would like to sit down with them and see how they did that and if it would be feasible for us. I think having some real numbers would help us see if we could afford it, without being too house poor. We will have our house paid off in a couple months, so in some ways it seems crazy to go from banking all this extra cash to having a medium/large mortgage for 30 years, but on the other hand would love to have a little more land/ little more space/ stay in our neighborhood. So we are at least going to start sort of pursuing it until we come to a hard 'no'.
- Learn to play a piano song. Last Christmas my dad gave me sheet music for a song I liked and I don't think I played the piano all year. After seeing Mannheim Steamroller last month I was feeling nostalgic and missing being connected to music. I used to play piano and clarinet, although neither well, but enjoyed it and could be better with some practice.
- Read through this stack of books:
My game plan is to take a book to work and on my pump breaks I will alternate working on my BSF Bible study homework one pump break, and read on the second pump break. That way I'll get in an hour a week. And it will be a better use of time than just scrolling the internet on my phone.
- Travel. We also have plans for a trip to Germany for my old host brother's wedding in September. While in Europe I hope to see at least one more country, talking with Doug about where to go and what to do. Would love to do Greece, but not sure if we have enough time to do it justice and/or if it would be too hard logistically with the kids. We shall see.
Looking forward to 2020!
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Reflection on 2019 Goals
Not only a new year, but a new century! Wow. Happy New Year!! The kids are napping, and I had a little nap too, and it's time to look back and see how my 2019 goals played out:
Lose the baby weight. - I guess we can call this a yes. I am at or a pound or two below my pre-baby weight. Although baby #2 definitely did a number on my stomach. I have a lot of stretch marks that have faded in color but the skin looks wrinkly. I find myself relating a lot to this blog girl that got an abdominoplasty because of big time belly bloat at the end of the day, and a stomach that she says "looks like the bottom of a burrito". Anyway, I don't know if a major surgery is in my future, but it's kinda funny at work we get abdominoplasty patients all the time so I'm very familiar with them! I probably could do more with weight loss and ab strengthening first before I'd think more about it, but it's true you can't weight loss or tighten loose skin. Oh well. I don't love the look of it, but kinda just figure it comes with the territory of having babies.
Get another rental property. - Nope. We got outbid several times and walked away from another property that our inspection showed a lot of mold and issues. 2020 is going to be our year I'm sure!
Save money. - I think we pretty much saved between 800-1200 every month. We also started saving more for the kid's private school accounts.
Read these books:
- Fail! I only read 3 out of these 9! I did read a book every month for fun for my book club, and I read a couple other books that weren't in that original pile. But out of that stack I only made it through: Bringing up Boys (loved it), Love & Logic Magic for Early Childhood (good, but when giving 2 choices to my son he always picks "option #3!" so that's frustrating), and Loving our Kids on Purpose (some good info, but not a favorite).
House Projects. - Replace the hall carpet with hardwoods.
- Kinda! We got new carpets a couple months ago. The pad is so much thicker and nice and it looks a lot nicer.
(can't exactly see, but the new carpet is in the bedroom wing and in the kid's play area.) It makes a difference, I used to have to vacuum at least weekly and I haven't even vacuumed since we got the new carpet a month + ago, it just doesn't show any dirt!
I want to replace the rug in the living room.
- We got a wool rug but unfortunately our cat instantly started scratching it, and it also shed like crazy so I hated that. So we got another cheapie. We also upgraded our tv cabinet and got a "new" flat screen tv for free when our friends sized up their old one. Score!
The big one will be replacing the front deck with composite decking.
- Yes! Doug did almost all of it by himself this summer with just a little help from my dad.
So nice and clean looking.
We plan to have the baby in our room for awhile and then have the two kids share the bigger back bedroom, so at some point that room will have to undergo a transformation from it's current treadmill/guest bed/storage/Doug's dresser and bookcase/closet situation.
- We decided against having the kids share for now, which unfortunately means we lost our office/exercise/guest room option. But it works well to have each kid in their own bedrooms for now.
Jeanie's pretty nursery.
And my favorite goal, vacation. - We have a little babymoon planned for February, no where crazy, but a new place for us- Gulf Shores, Alabama. I'm looking forward to warm, sun and sand, and baby-free time! We'd also like to take a fall family trip somewhere. Either our friend is having a destination cruise wedding to Cozumel, or he might not do that anymore and that would free us up to go on our own trip. We'd LOVE to go back to Hawaii, but the flights are always so expensive and kinda worried about the change with kids. We are also looking into Iceland. We shall see!
- We did our babymoon to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Loved it!
We also did our first family road trip to Chattenooga, Tennessee, loved that too.
spiritual goals for the year are to finish up BSF this spring/summer, start the new class in the fall, and I have a variety of mini devotions to work through on my Bible app: Keep Your Love On: Connection, No More Unglued Mama Mornings, Wait and See, Discover the Jewish Jesus, and 5 Days to Freedom from Angry Parenting- these are all plans I have saved so far. It's nice because each one is 1-2 weeks so I can do several of them over the year. We are in a good place church-wise and also joined a small group this fall so hope to develop those relationships deeper.
- Finished up the People of the Promised Land part 1 BSF study in the spring and started the Acts study in the fall. I finished 9 mini Bible study plan/devotions on my Bible phone app. Those are so nice, they have such a huge variety of topics and you can just squeeze one in whenever. We are also still in our small group and have met and hung out with several couples and families over the year so that is great.
2019 was a pretty good year for our family, we are thankful.
- Fail! I only read 3 out of these 9! I did read a book every month for fun for my book club, and I read a couple other books that weren't in that original pile. But out of that stack I only made it through: Bringing up Boys (loved it), Love & Logic Magic for Early Childhood (good, but when giving 2 choices to my son he always picks "option #3!" so that's frustrating), and Loving our Kids on Purpose (some good info, but not a favorite).
House Projects. - Replace the hall carpet with hardwoods.
- Kinda! We got new carpets a couple months ago. The pad is so much thicker and nice and it looks a lot nicer.
(can't exactly see, but the new carpet is in the bedroom wing and in the kid's play area.) It makes a difference, I used to have to vacuum at least weekly and I haven't even vacuumed since we got the new carpet a month + ago, it just doesn't show any dirt!
I want to replace the rug in the living room.
- We got a wool rug but unfortunately our cat instantly started scratching it, and it also shed like crazy so I hated that. So we got another cheapie. We also upgraded our tv cabinet and got a "new" flat screen tv for free when our friends sized up their old one. Score!
The big one will be replacing the front deck with composite decking.
- Yes! Doug did almost all of it by himself this summer with just a little help from my dad.
So nice and clean looking.
We plan to have the baby in our room for awhile and then have the two kids share the bigger back bedroom, so at some point that room will have to undergo a transformation from it's current treadmill/guest bed/storage/Doug's dresser and bookcase/closet situation.
- We decided against having the kids share for now, which unfortunately means we lost our office/exercise/guest room option. But it works well to have each kid in their own bedrooms for now.
Jeanie's pretty nursery.
And my favorite goal, vacation. - We have a little babymoon planned for February, no where crazy, but a new place for us- Gulf Shores, Alabama. I'm looking forward to warm, sun and sand, and baby-free time! We'd also like to take a fall family trip somewhere. Either our friend is having a destination cruise wedding to Cozumel, or he might not do that anymore and that would free us up to go on our own trip. We'd LOVE to go back to Hawaii, but the flights are always so expensive and kinda worried about the change with kids. We are also looking into Iceland. We shall see!
- We did our babymoon to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Loved it!
We also did our first family road trip to Chattenooga, Tennessee, loved that too.
spiritual goals for the year are to finish up BSF this spring/summer, start the new class in the fall, and I have a variety of mini devotions to work through on my Bible app: Keep Your Love On: Connection, No More Unglued Mama Mornings, Wait and See, Discover the Jewish Jesus, and 5 Days to Freedom from Angry Parenting- these are all plans I have saved so far. It's nice because each one is 1-2 weeks so I can do several of them over the year. We are in a good place church-wise and also joined a small group this fall so hope to develop those relationships deeper.
- Finished up the People of the Promised Land part 1 BSF study in the spring and started the Acts study in the fall. I finished 9 mini Bible study plan/devotions on my Bible phone app. Those are so nice, they have such a huge variety of topics and you can just squeeze one in whenever. We are also still in our small group and have met and hung out with several couples and families over the year so that is great.
2019 was a pretty good year for our family, we are thankful.
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