We may not be blogging, but here's a few other things we've been doing:
San Diego Zoo:
Friday, July 17, 2015
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
3 reasons I know I married the right person
1. At the end of the day at the beach, he looks over and says "Want to go jump in the ocean one more time?" and does a kamikaze run with me to dive through a few more waves.
2. He's really good at finding things (keys, etc).
3. He dances at weddings.
2. He's really good at finding things (keys, etc).
3. He dances at weddings.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Current status:
"We'll stay home and get so many things done today," I said.
"We'll do all the chores and vacuum everywhere and clean the bathroom," I said.
"I'll work out AND take the girls out for a walk to take books back to the library," I said.
"Maybe I'll even finish that film/photo stuff I was working on yesterday," I said.
"We'll have it all done so we can play hard all weekend," I said.
How today has really gone:
Wake up, feed baby, bring baby into bed to sleep a little longer. Husband gets up.
Wake up to toddler whining as she tries to get in our bed. Pull her up, go back to sleep.
Wake up again. Sneak into shower while baby still sleeping.
Say goodbye to husband, help small girls eat. Change diapers a couple of times.
Get toddler a drink, and prop baby nearby while I grab my hand weights. Start Jillian Michaels work out. 5 minutes later, jump rope to the kitchen to get more chocolate milk for whiny toddler. Interrupt dumbbell squats to help screaming baby find the binky. At minute 13, stop the DVD and decide to nurse the inconsolable baby. I'll have to get back to it during naptime.
Read stack of books to toddler.
Eat hurried breakfast at 10.
Finally begin cleaning.
Put toys in basket. Put toys in other basket. Have toddler empty both baskets. Help toddler put the doll in the high chair.
Put toys in basket again. Have toddler empty again.
Renew library books online so we don't have to make a trip to the library today.
Visit with neighbor out front.
Hungry baby again.
Toddler crying about something sticky, which I try to wipe off, but her foot isn't actually sticky and she's still mad. Have toddler scream at me for coloring in her reading chart, storm off repeatedly throwing down and picking up reading chart. She's still angry I colored the circle pink (her favorite color at the moment).
Hold baby that apparently needs to be held. Toddler now climbing in my lap on top of baby, crying about how she needs to be held. Toddler shoving baby aside.
Get baby asleep. Pick up toddler, talk her down, sing.
Baby wakes. Too sad to be adjacent on the couch.
Both girls are sad. Both have to be held. Both are tired and both need a lap. Sing, coerce, juggle and wish for an extra set of arms. Repeat the same Primary song over and over.
Toddler down! Let nap time commence!
Baby down! Let nap time commence!
Baby flutters in and out of sleep. I realize I should stay put for a minute. Browse the internet. Pull up the blog.
It's now 1pm. We haven't gone anywhere. Still have yet to vacuum. In fact, I need to put the toys back in the basket again. No one has eaten lunch.
But everyone is now soundly enough asleep that I may try and move these children and actually get something done. (Hint: it won't be Jillian Michaels.)
Both children are now stirring.
I'm off!
Sunday, May 31, 2015
why my baby doesn't officially have a name yet and why that shouldn't bother you
A few weeks ago, I was going to write this post. It would look something like this:
1) Does she have a name yet?
No.
2) Why not?
We don't know.
3) Isn't this still kind of weird?
Yes.
3.5) Weren't you trying to avoid this?
Yes.
4) But what do you call her?
A lot of things.
5) But ... the birth certificate?!?!
Yeah, still not worried about that. Turns out she still has a social security number and insurance and stuff.
Remember how hard we were trying and wanted to name our new baby right away?
Didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. But at this point, we're totally over it.
So what happened?
You know about the battle while I was pregnant. The search for names. The continual weight and looming of naming our unborn child. We gave it a good, honest go. We tried so hard.
The last couple weeks we felt pretty solid on a first name. My husband didn't want to tell people yet. I didn't tell a soul. One Sunday afternoon we went on a walk, and there was a headstone with my anticipated baby's name on it. There was another one that said "Greta." I know headstones aren't always seen as comforting, but this one was. It was my sign. We had a name.
We then spent considerable amount of time narrowing down our list of middle names. We went through all the tabs on the spreadsheet. (For the curious at home, the tabs are as follows: Name Brainstorm, Family Names, Alphabet of Names, Names from our Favorite Books and Movies, One syllable names, Two Syllable Names, Three syllable Names, Places, Flora & Fauna, and Top Contenders.) We narrowed down a list of 8 middle names. I know, 8 is still a lot. But it was a good go for us.
D-day came, and we got to the hospital for my c-section (a story for another day.)
My labor and delivery nurse asked about names. We didn't have one. Somehow it came up that it took a number of weeks for our last daughter to officially get a name. She laughed and said, "That's nothing! I changed my son's name when he was three." We died. Loved her even more. Well, at least we'd do better than that.
We had a baby in the evening. By the time we went to bed, a lot had been going on and we hadn't had a chance to talk about it a lot. I thought that on Day 2 we'd probably name her.
We started talking out loud about names.
We had our favorite, but wasn't sure if it totally fit. And we were worried about some possible nicknames. And we went back to say, our favorite Top 10-ish. And just kept floating names and name combinations around.
And then, somehow it happened. All over again.
We did not have a name. We were not close to having a name. A lot of people had opinions about names. There was a lot of talk about our potential names. Our nurses made comments about names and called the baby "Don't Know Yet."
The real problem was that the two of us still weren't feeling good about the same thing. With that sweet little girl in his arms, my husband couldn't feel settled on the name we had previously thought. I still was and would've done it. But he didn't. He ended up favoring a name that was one of my long-time favorites, like from high school and college. But I didn't feel good about that one.
The night before we left the hospital we stayed up late. We took each other's favorite name and made arguments for or against it. Literal pro and con lists. I was SO determined to get a name on the birth certificate before we left the hospital. We fell asleep doing this. Woke up still not on the same page. And left the hospital with nothing there.
I steeled myself and told myself I would have a name for the baby by the time she was a week old.
On Day 6, I went through 1100 baby names (you read that right) and made a list of my favorites. I shared them with my husband. It didn't change things much.
On Day 7, we decided to call her Eloise. It had been one of the top names in the hospital. And we just started calling her that.
People asked if it was official, if it was final. I told them no. It wasn't on a birth certificate and I didn't want people getting huffy if it didn't stick. I didn't know what was going to happen! Jason and I kept wrestling over middle names. It was that strange, terrible pattern all over again. Jason didn't like some of the names he used to love, and the same for me.
Our siblings were dying. "What is her name?" "Will she ever have a name?" "What is her official name?" I had some brothers offering up their favorite names to me, saying I could use them. Or giving alternate suggestions to the name I said.
I had a sibling have a baby, who was named within the day. There was some teasing that the new baby had an official name on record, but my two week old didn't. As my brother chided, "It's almost like they thought about it before they had the baby!"
But at least we kept calling her Eloise.
She's 5 weeks old, and still Eloise. To be honest, I'm not totally at peace with it, but it does seem to somehow fit her and I'm pretty sure that's going to be her name. It was one of my favorites (in fact, on my first baby name list from last August!) but Jason didn't even like it at all until after she was born.
Her middle name will probably be Pearl.
I've had to come to terms with this one -- I like the name, but mostly just really want to avoid having two sisters who both have gemstone middle names. It kind of feels like the cheesiest/worst to me, and I do not think it is a cute pattern. But the "Ruby" in Greta Ruby comes from an ancestor of mine named Ruby Brown. And "Pearl" comes from Jennie Pearl Knight, the woman I'm named after. So the connections are to people, anyway, and have nothing to do with precious stones.
Then I got nervous about getting locked into a pattern of family middle names. Jason and I swore we'd never have naming patterns -- not because they're inherently bad -- but because we wanted to name our kids whatever we wanted and not feel obligated to fit into a forced pattern that we gave ourselves. We have enough trouble as it is.
But we might go with Pearl anyway.
So. Eloise. Eloise Pearl. Is it on a birth certificate? Is it official?
Nope.
Are people still curious about this whole name situation? You bet! We still get a lot of questions about it. My mom even gets questioned every week at church from a friend. We understand. Most people haven't met someone who took this long. We haven't, either.
Here's the thing: try not to let it bother you too much. Like we mentioned, it's not for lack of trying. And turns out, it doesn't actually affect you or anyone else -- not even Eloise! Legally she's still a person, and socially she's still just as loved. It'll happen soon enough. (Which will probably be much later than anyone thinks reasonable!)
And should a Baby Brown #3 come along? Well. ...Probably not even worth asking for a few weeks.
1) Does she have a name yet?
No.
2) Why not?
We don't know.
3) Isn't this still kind of weird?
Yes.
3.5) Weren't you trying to avoid this?
Yes.
4) But what do you call her?
A lot of things.
5) But ... the birth certificate?!?!
Yeah, still not worried about that. Turns out she still has a social security number and insurance and stuff.
Remember how hard we were trying and wanted to name our new baby right away?
Didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. But at this point, we're totally over it.
So what happened?
You know about the battle while I was pregnant. The search for names. The continual weight and looming of naming our unborn child. We gave it a good, honest go. We tried so hard.
The last couple weeks we felt pretty solid on a first name. My husband didn't want to tell people yet. I didn't tell a soul. One Sunday afternoon we went on a walk, and there was a headstone with my anticipated baby's name on it. There was another one that said "Greta." I know headstones aren't always seen as comforting, but this one was. It was my sign. We had a name.
We then spent considerable amount of time narrowing down our list of middle names. We went through all the tabs on the spreadsheet. (For the curious at home, the tabs are as follows: Name Brainstorm, Family Names, Alphabet of Names, Names from our Favorite Books and Movies, One syllable names, Two Syllable Names, Three syllable Names, Places, Flora & Fauna, and Top Contenders.) We narrowed down a list of 8 middle names. I know, 8 is still a lot. But it was a good go for us.
D-day came, and we got to the hospital for my c-section (a story for another day.)
My labor and delivery nurse asked about names. We didn't have one. Somehow it came up that it took a number of weeks for our last daughter to officially get a name. She laughed and said, "That's nothing! I changed my son's name when he was three." We died. Loved her even more. Well, at least we'd do better than that.
We had a baby in the evening. By the time we went to bed, a lot had been going on and we hadn't had a chance to talk about it a lot. I thought that on Day 2 we'd probably name her.
We started talking out loud about names.
We had our favorite, but wasn't sure if it totally fit. And we were worried about some possible nicknames. And we went back to say, our favorite Top 10-ish. And just kept floating names and name combinations around.
And then, somehow it happened. All over again.
We did not have a name. We were not close to having a name. A lot of people had opinions about names. There was a lot of talk about our potential names. Our nurses made comments about names and called the baby "Don't Know Yet."
The real problem was that the two of us still weren't feeling good about the same thing. With that sweet little girl in his arms, my husband couldn't feel settled on the name we had previously thought. I still was and would've done it. But he didn't. He ended up favoring a name that was one of my long-time favorites, like from high school and college. But I didn't feel good about that one.
The night before we left the hospital we stayed up late. We took each other's favorite name and made arguments for or against it. Literal pro and con lists. I was SO determined to get a name on the birth certificate before we left the hospital. We fell asleep doing this. Woke up still not on the same page. And left the hospital with nothing there.
I steeled myself and told myself I would have a name for the baby by the time she was a week old.
On Day 6, I went through 1100 baby names (you read that right) and made a list of my favorites. I shared them with my husband. It didn't change things much.
On Day 7, we decided to call her Eloise. It had been one of the top names in the hospital. And we just started calling her that.
People asked if it was official, if it was final. I told them no. It wasn't on a birth certificate and I didn't want people getting huffy if it didn't stick. I didn't know what was going to happen! Jason and I kept wrestling over middle names. It was that strange, terrible pattern all over again. Jason didn't like some of the names he used to love, and the same for me.
Our siblings were dying. "What is her name?" "Will she ever have a name?" "What is her official name?" I had some brothers offering up their favorite names to me, saying I could use them. Or giving alternate suggestions to the name I said.
I had a sibling have a baby, who was named within the day. There was some teasing that the new baby had an official name on record, but my two week old didn't. As my brother chided, "It's almost like they thought about it before they had the baby!"
But at least we kept calling her Eloise.
She's 5 weeks old, and still Eloise. To be honest, I'm not totally at peace with it, but it does seem to somehow fit her and I'm pretty sure that's going to be her name. It was one of my favorites (in fact, on my first baby name list from last August!) but Jason didn't even like it at all until after she was born.
Her middle name will probably be Pearl.
I've had to come to terms with this one -- I like the name, but mostly just really want to avoid having two sisters who both have gemstone middle names. It kind of feels like the cheesiest/worst to me, and I do not think it is a cute pattern. But the "Ruby" in Greta Ruby comes from an ancestor of mine named Ruby Brown. And "Pearl" comes from Jennie Pearl Knight, the woman I'm named after. So the connections are to people, anyway, and have nothing to do with precious stones.
Then I got nervous about getting locked into a pattern of family middle names. Jason and I swore we'd never have naming patterns -- not because they're inherently bad -- but because we wanted to name our kids whatever we wanted and not feel obligated to fit into a forced pattern that we gave ourselves. We have enough trouble as it is.
But we might go with Pearl anyway.
So. Eloise. Eloise Pearl. Is it on a birth certificate? Is it official?
Nope.
Are people still curious about this whole name situation? You bet! We still get a lot of questions about it. My mom even gets questioned every week at church from a friend. We understand. Most people haven't met someone who took this long. We haven't, either.
Here's the thing: try not to let it bother you too much. Like we mentioned, it's not for lack of trying. And turns out, it doesn't actually affect you or anyone else -- not even Eloise! Legally she's still a person, and socially she's still just as loved. It'll happen soon enough. (Which will probably be much later than anyone thinks reasonable!)
And should a Baby Brown #3 come along? Well. ...Probably not even worth asking for a few weeks.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
For the first time, I have two napping children at the same time who have recently been fed. One downstairs in her own bed. One asleep in a swing. Neither of them are asleep on me.
This might be the kind of moment that I would do something like blog --- but I might have a few more pressing things at the moment.
Happy May!
(EDIT/UPDATE: that lasted all of 10 minutes, max. Well. It was a nice ten minutes!)
This might be the kind of moment that I would do something like blog --- but I might have a few more pressing things at the moment.
Happy May!
(EDIT/UPDATE: that lasted all of 10 minutes, max. Well. It was a nice ten minutes!)
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
overdue
When you're overdue, you start looking for every sign that you might be *just about* to go into labor.
Here's some things that haven't meant I was about to go into labor:
• getting the best night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting the worst night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting nauseous, faint and dizzy for hours
• contractions
• having days where I felt great and perfectly fine
• sudden very puffy feet
• sudden unswollen feet
• having fewer bladder management skills
• a sudden acne breakout
• having a perfectly clean house
• having a perfectly messy house
We were pretty convinced this baby was coming early. We also had a lot of big events going on a couple weeks ago, and somehow convinced her to stay put until we got through those.
Now we've been trying to convince her to come out (so I can avoid another c-section), and it doesn't seem to be going as well.
We've been pretty patient.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting.
Our doctor's been pretty patient. And very amiable to our hopes and requests.
But something's gotta give soon. They can't let me do this forever. If I don't go into labor on my own, I'll either be getting a c-section tomorrow or on the weekend.
Here's some things that haven't meant I was about to go into labor:
• getting the best night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting the worst night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting nauseous, faint and dizzy for hours
• contractions
• having days where I felt great and perfectly fine
• sudden very puffy feet
• sudden unswollen feet
• having fewer bladder management skills
• a sudden acne breakout
• having a perfectly clean house
• having a perfectly messy house
We were pretty convinced this baby was coming early. We also had a lot of big events going on a couple weeks ago, and somehow convinced her to stay put until we got through those.
Now we've been trying to convince her to come out (so I can avoid another c-section), and it doesn't seem to be going as well.
We've been pretty patient.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting.
Our doctor's been pretty patient. And very amiable to our hopes and requests.
But something's gotta give soon. They can't let me do this forever. If I don't go into labor on my own, I'll either be getting a c-section tomorrow or on the weekend.
... but on the other hand, I just lost my wallet. That's gotta mean something big will happen any minute now, right?!
(can you check into the hospital without any forms of ID?)
Saturday, April 11, 2015
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