I must be the worst blogger!!

I must be the worst blogger in the world!  I keep a hand written journal and it seems when I stop writing online I start writing in my journal!  Well much to much has happened to go through it all now...I have 4 kids now...I think last I updated I was announcing my 3rd little girls birth!  Well baby #4 was a boy!  He is precious as is my girls!  My oldest is now in 1st grade and loves school!  My baby boy, Wylie Allen, is 16 months old.  I will try to be better at posting on this!!!

Long time Update!

Wow how time flies! So since my last update there is just to much that has gone on so I'll give the updates:

• I quit my stay at home job I previously talked about. I had to show at least 40 hrs of available work time and then they'd pick 25-30 hrs that I'd actually work....well my hubby was going to school full time and working full time which leaves me with hardly any work time! So the company wanted me working in the morning and then at night again...lol...not. Both my children were really showing signs of needing there mommy while I was getting babysitters just to get through the training period-before I could pick my own schedule. After much thought and prayer and communicating with my husband, we decided that my main focus is the kids and that with me working and worrying about working...I can't focus 100% on our children's needs. I've always believed that if you can stay at home with your kids, you should. After all, if you working, who is raising your kids? So I am lucky...I am able to stay at home and give 110% attention to my little ones! Although we don't have the extra income I would have brought in, I consider myself truly blessed to have a wonderful husband who is supportive and for being able to raise our kids and be there for them through the day! I know there are many single moms who can't stay home and I know I am truly blessed and grateful to be a mom and be there for my kids at a moments notice.
  
• After a long pregnancy...morning sickness, swine flu-if you are pregnant swine flu hits you like a ton of bricks I kid you not! and then prelabor symptoms over and over... we finally welcomed our 3rd little girl to our family in February 2010. We named her Maybree Viola. She is just an angel. She is so mellow and calm. She has been sleeping through the night wonderfully. I am very PRO breastfeeding. All of my 3 girls have been exclusively breastfed until 1 year old when I start the weening process. I have never even given my girls 1 drop of formula...which I am also blessed to be able to nurse, provide the nutrition my babies have needed as well as not spending any money on formula! I find that it calms me to nurse. It's nice to have time with just my sweet Maybree to nurse her and be taken back by this sweet baby. Her 2 older sisters love her so much! I am so blessed to have 3 sweet little girls!
• My husband graduated with his bachelor's degree in April 2010! Congratulations Greg on all your hard work! I love you so much and I am so proud of you!
• MaKenzie is now 4 years old and MaKayla is now 2.

I'll end my updates here and just simply pick up with my new adventures of being a mother to 3 sweet little girls!

Embarressing Yard...

Our yard has been seriously neglected these past few weeks. I've been to sick with morning sickness to mow. Greg is doing full time school and full time work. So our yard is terrible. When the kids go out to play, they come close to getting lost in our weeds! So in the middle of my absolutely terrible and hopeless work week, on the worst day of it too, I received a letter in my mail with no return address. It was hand written from a neighbor telling use our yard was terrible. Thank you neighbor, for making me even more depressed over my terrible yard I don't have time or energy for! Especially because in spring we dug out pretty garden boxes planted a garden and beautiful flowers, it looked great! I guess morning sickness takes life over right? Anyways, I'm a litttle upset this neighbor, whoever they are, didn't just come to my door and talk to me. Instead they send me a rude and threatening letter! The worst part about the whole thing is that our street is full of houses with terrible yards-we live in a college town. I wouldn't have picked our yard to be the worst. It doesn't help though that we are directly located by all of the, only 4, houses that actually keep there yards up. Everyone else west of us on the street is a joke when it comes to yard work. Blah. Now we need to find time for yet another chore!

Soccer

We signed Kenzie up for soccer this year....yes she is young for this. They really just practice drills. It's cute to watch. She loves it! It's so fun watching her develop her skills and watching Kayla try everything her big sister is doing.

My new job.....

I wish the weekend would never end! I love weekends. So I started a new job. My husband's company cut everyone's income by 8% and the company I've been running is struggling in this economy. So we find ourselves much tighter on money than we've been in a while....so I searched online forever and was able to find an at home job. Which is why I've disappeared the last several weeks. So here my new job:

At home job answering customer service calls. They sent me a computer to use. They pay me hourly. I'm supposed to pick my own hours which is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought.... The 1st two weeks was training full time hours....I didn't get to pick those hours. So everyday I got friends and family to babysit....thanks everyone! I really missed being with my kids during those long hours! So after 2 weeks we started on the phone...which was simply put...pure crap. We have had 3 weeks on the phone....during which is still training so again, not my own schedule. But at least it's part time now which is what I wanted. Now that training is done on Monday, they want me and several others to stay in training 1 more week. I have no more babysitters available this week. What am I supposed to do? Blah.

To tell you the truth I kinda hate this job. We have to show 40 hours of availability to work in a week and they schedule us for 25 of those hours. I'm having a hard time coming up with 40 of availability!!!! I don't have that much time-if I did, wouldn't I want to work full time or something? At 1st they gave me a split schedule so I was working 2x a day...no way....I can't do that...I don't have the time for that...

Simply put...I don't know what to do...I feel like this should be a good opportunity for me and my family. I feel like it was the right thing to do. But I'm not surviving having a nervous break down everyday! Now I'm stuck and can't make any decisions....Blah! Man this is terrible.

Sunscreen

Going to the pool or anywhere that requires slathering on the sunscreen can be so much fun!....except the slathering on the sunscreen part! I've always dreaded that part of any event. I have a some what obsessive compulsive side and I can never seem to get it all over the exposed skin.....is the bathing suit going to move around and expose more skin, ears, parts in the hair, etc! It drives me crazy. At a family picnic recently I watched my sister sunscreen her daughter with her spray on sunscreen and thought, "Holy crap that went fast!" Since I had forgot my sunscreen I used hers and I couldn't believe how fast putting sunscreen on both my kids went! I know I must be a little behind the times. Every time I saw the spray on sunscreen in the stores I never bought it because it seemed like it was just a little more expensive than the regular cream. I don't think I could ever go back now! There are just some products out there that I believe are just worth the extra penny. Simply because I was so slow putting on sunscreen before. The price difference isn't much if you find the right sale. For others that don't take a million years sunscreening their children, regular sunscreen works great too! But I'm in love with spray on sunscreen now! Happy Day!

Toy Bins

Several weeks ago we went to IKEA in an attempt to organize the girls bedroom. We're currently trying to jam a crib, toddler bed, changing table, dresser, about a million stuffed animals, and another million toys into there room. Of course you have the toys that are to big to fit anywhere like the toy baby stroller & play pin, art desk, grocery cart, etc.... I'd never been to IKEA before so I mainly just wanted to check it out and possible get a shelf for the toys or something. Our current shelf is far from doing it's job. So we took the 45 minute trip to IKEA and WOW! I had no idea it was so big! We only got lost a few times but what cool stuff it has! We ended up getting a shelving system that has colored bins that slide in & out. It is great for the girls to be able to put away there own toys. We want to put a picture on each bin so they'll be able to organize them when putting their toys away. The best part is...there room is so clean and organized now! We also got a hang up stuffed animal sorter. We are hanging it from the ceiling and there are several compartments with openings to put stuffed animals in. It's nice so that if the kids what an animal that's on the bottom, you don't have to empty the whole thing out simply because there are different compartments the whole way down with openings. We also got a pink canopy to hang over there beds. It was only about $8.00 and since the girls were so behaved they talked us into it. It hangs from the ceiling and can reach around the crib and bed that are next to each other in an L shape. They feel like they have princess beds now. I also found a shoe holder. It's like a drawer that pops out that you can put your shoes in. We always have a build up of shoes by the back door. It comes with 3 in a container so we'll use 2 for shoes and 1 for the bathtub...they are plastic and since finding space to put all the bath toys is also a problem we'll hang one on the wall above the tub. Since it's plastic the wet toys won't be a problem and it's small enough not to be in the way but big enough to hold the bunch of bath toys we have. I love getting organized! Let me know if you have any cool organization tips!

Lunch Time Mess...

We had a crazy 4th of July weekend leaving us with a huge mess in our house. We weren't home practically at all. The only thing we really came home for was to add to the diaper bag or drop things off. We went to the Scera pool (a great place for kids), camped out for the 4th of July parade, a family picnic, & Stadium of Fire. We kept coming home to dump out the bag and add other things in we'd need. We need a vacation after our holiday now! With our kitchen being a mess and no counter or table space empty we decided to have a picnic in the living room today for lunch. I laid out a sheet and had the kids eating Spagettios on it....I know, bad choice of food in the living room, but we badly need a grocery shopping trip so it was really the only option. Of course everything was fine till Kayla got full and kept trying to get up with sauce all over her face. Somehow a very small amount of sauce got on the carpet regardless of the sheet. I used a product called Kids and Pets to get the sauce out of our light colored carpet. I highly recommend it with our 2 kids & 2 dogs it's on our shopping list every month almost.

Diaper Rash 2

Kayla's diaper rash is all cleared up now. We used Cornstarch and it cleared right up. The A & D cream was very useful too. No more owies!!!

Big Annoucement!

So we annouced the big news this last weekend on the 4th of July. We are expecting our 3rd little one. It is a little early to announce it at only 6 weeks along. But, it has not been easy to keep it underwraps. We're excited and although I'm not sick right now, I'm super exhausted and extremely honory! :) So we annouced our new little one. Our 3 year old is so excited! We explained that mommy's tummy is going to get bigger as the baby grows. So the other day she says to me, "Mommy, your tummy is getting HUUUGE!!!" Just great I thought... We had our 3 year old annouce it to our family. While everyone was together for the holiday we had her say, "There's a baby in my mommy's tummy!" She had to say it 3 times for everyone to finally hear her shy tone of voice.

Picking up laundry

Lately, in an effort to keep my house cleaner I have been trying to teach the kids to put their dirty clothes away. The clothes usually end up all over the floor. When it's time to do laundry it's a nightmare running around the house picking up all the dirty clothes off the floor. So lately after I change the girls I have been handing them their dirty clothes and walking to the hamper with them to show them where it all goes. They actually like this. The key is that I have to walk with them and get them all excited. Hopefully trying to make this a habbit at such a young age will make it stick through their lives.

Laundry

I have a permanent pile of clean clothes on the love seat in my living room. Originally the idea was that I would dump all the clean clothes there and then fold them while I was watching TV. My sister came up with this method. She is a mother of 4 and she does all the laundry in 1 day. She fills the hallway by the laundry room with dirty clothes and sorts them into piles while spraying the stains. After she completes each load it goes on the coach where she then folds for what seems like forever. This method works great for her. But I have not been able to do it. I end up never finding time to either start the folding or finish it. It sits on my coach....forever....till it's worn and dirty and goes back to the hamper....or floor. That's how I used to tell it was time to do laundry again because the pile on the coach would be so low! I have been trying to fold every load right as it has been coming out of the dryer lately and this is working much better. Sometimes my folded piles don't make it all the way to the drawers but I'm working on it! Any other ideas?

Crying/Communicating

This was sent from Kathy Brown:

Whenever a child cries, he or she is trying to tell you something. That's my opinion.

Diaper Rash 1

I've been lucky enough that my kids haven't had many bad diaper rashes, but over the last few days Kayla has developed a pretty bad rash. She is miserable with it! I usaully put A&D cream on it and that helps. Tonight I decided to try Corn Starch because that is what my mom always tells me to use. We'll see what happens!

Bedtime Trip

How many times have your kids fallen asleep in the car and when you get home you end up waking them up to change a diaper for put PJs on them? I was at a babyshower quite some time ago and while one of the moms was preparing to leave with her small children I watched what she did. She changed diapers and took kids to the potty and then quickly put PJs on them before getting in the car. I thought to myself that even though this was such a simple trick, how come I had never figured it out!!! So anytime we think we might be getting home late, I always pack a pair of PJs along for the kids and change them before we head home. Sometimes this little trick works great! Sometimes the kids are stubburn and I swear they catch on and make sure they stay awake! But the times it does work, it's great!

Ear Infection

Quite some time ago Kenzie was acting just a little different than her normal cheerful self. I keep getting the feeling something was wrong and I should take her to the doctor. She had a low fever that was difficult to see if it had gone away. My husband told me I was paranoid. I couldn't shake the feeling though. After taking her to the doctor it was confirmed she did have something wrong. She had an ear infection. Don't ever ignore your mother's intuition even though sometimes it's hard to tell apart from being paranoid. :)

Intuition

This is the story that inspired the name of this blog. I've had many moments being a mother where I have questioned whether or not I posess "mother's intuition." When I was a new mom I once had our pediatrician answer a question I had about my sick child by stating I should use my "mother's intution." I laughed and told him I wasn't sure if I had that yet! Since then I know that "mother's intuition" is real. I know my mom posessed this.

Several months ago my daughters and I caught the stomach flu. When you have babies that can't exactly tell you that they are going to vomit and when it happens it's everywhere what do you do? Both my kids are usually just wanting to be with me when they are vomiting regulary. I drape towels over our recliner and myself while I hold them and they're going in and out of sleep. When the warning signs start (heeving, tossing, crying, etc.) I grab the "puck bucket" and brace myself for what's coming.

My oldest was just getting over the stomach flu when one night Kayla woke up crying. Already exhausted from caring for Kenzie through her illness, I brought Kayla into my bed to sleep. We both fell asleep again. A few hours later I was dreaming a very strange dream about getting ready to go on a date with my husband. It was one of those dreams that felt so real yet had such strange things happen. Eventually the dream changed that I wasn't going on a date with my husband anymore, I was getting ready to take Kayla on a mommy daughter outting. She was in her saucer playing and as I approached her she looked like she was going to vomit. I heard a voice in my dream calmly tell me, "She's going to throw up. Wake up." I suddenly realized it was all a dream and quickly woke up. I checked on Kayla as she was sleeping next to me in my bed. Everything was fine and she was still. I rolled over to reach for my water and as I started to drink I heard something. In the dark I could see that Kayla was now choking in her sleep. She was not vomiting, but while laying on her back sleeping she was choking on her vomit. With my one free hand I grabbed her and rolled her towards me. She stopped choking...and vomited all over me. But the good news is that she didn't choke in her sleep. Sometimes miracles are messy. But what a crazy experience!

The mom blog!

I'm not the most computer friendly person so I've decided to start this blog as an experiment and an opportunity to learn. I decided to write about what I spend almost all my time doing. Being a mom!!! I am a mother of 2 miraculous little girls. Since I'll be talking a lot about them, allow me to introduce my family to you. First off, my name is Jeannie and my husband is Greg. He is a wonderful husband and dad who works full time and is completing his senior year in college. Kenzie is my energetic and kind 3 year old. She takes on the role of being the oldest and caring for her little sister with ease. Of course she has her fair share of "mine" episodes, but she loves her little sister and loves to care for those around her. Kayla is my youngest and she is 15 months old. She is my loving and bold "little sister." Our daring Kayla will try anything her older sister can do and will climb up anything. Now that you know my family, I'm excited to start this blog. I'm hoping I can share my experiences with you and that I can learn of other moms stories and trials through there stories shared as well.