so farkin pooped

sleeping with brynna sucks. lol. dave and i switched rooms last night and i swear that little girl got up about four times. she drank a hella lot of milk and this morning her diaper was hella full. my cousin suggested something really smart (lol...cuz i couldn't think of this on my own)...give her water instead of milk throughout the night and hopefully that will curb her wakings. then we can just leave the cup of water in the room and don't have to get up and go get milk from the fridge. much better for her eight teeth too. gosh.

put caleb in bebs today. he peed in seven of um before i put him in a pull up. try again tomorrow. fricka. i just feel his dingding and ask him if he gotta go pee and the next minute, he pees in his pants. i thought he wouldn't like the feeling...nope...he just tells me he peed like it's no big deal. he did cry when he peed the last time, though, cuz dave had just told him to tell us when he wants to pee. when we put the pull up on him, he thought we were taking him swimming since it's kind of like the swimmy diapers. lol.

rice should be pau steam now. teri miso fish, rice and artichokes for dinner. let's see how much of his artichoke dave eats.

furlough friday

yay for furlough friday during summer school!!! and yay for no basketball on a furlough friday so we could spend the whole day together without interruption!!! :-)

we decided we'd better make use of our yearly pass for the zoo, so we made a point to get up early enough and get ready quickly so we could get to the zoo at 9 when it opened. parking was wonderful, the zoo was empty, and it was as good a time at the zoo as i'll probably ever have, being that the zoo is SO not my favorite place. the only junk thing is that the elephants weren't out yet and we lost brynna's slipper.

after the zoo we headed out to waipio to pick up lunch and go to see baby and leish. em fed and slept for the whole time we were there, which was amazing because caleb and brynna definitely acted like a couple of loud monkeys...they had recharged their batteries with a power nap after the zoo!

headed home and i had to take a nap...i closed caleb into the room with me hoping that he would nap too, but he didn't...just screamed for a good fifteen minutes, then played his damn trucks and used my body for his road, so i wasn't able to really take a good nap. after my non-nap, dave said we should go to the pool since it wasn't too sunny but wasn't cold either. for the life of me i don't know where my tummy covering bathing suit is so i had to use another one, and i don't have any swim shorts, so thank goodness we were the only ones at the pool. brynna didn't like the pool much at first when i was carrying her, but once we put her in the floatie thing, she was just chillin. caleb kept telling dave to, "be careful!" when dave was carrying him around the pool. he much preferred sitting on the step and splashing water. it's actually really cute, though, to see caleb get into a mild panic when dave would put his head under water..."daddy, daddy, be careful, be careful!!!" lol. at least he doesn't want dave to drown. lol.

we all bocha'd when we got back from the pool, ate an early dinner, and now it's 8:20, dave's watching a movie, the kids are playing, and i'm thinking that it's gonna be an early night for us.

staying home

i've enjoyed summer a lot so far. i made a list of chores for me to do from monday to friday and that helps me stay focused and get housework done. there are still some areas that need deep cleaning, but for the most part, i'm satisfied with a lot of the cleaning that i've done. my living room still looks like a hurricane hit it by 9 a.m., but that's easily fixed by throwing everything in the right bins at the end of the night. i really need to find more chores to do because if i don't keep myself busy during the day, i get hella bored and grouchy and take it out on dave when he comes home. lol.

caleb has not been taking a good afternoon nap lately, a lot of it due to the fact that i like to go holoholo after dave gets home and we eat lunch, so we're out and about when he should be sleeping. he'll take little catnaps in the van, but that's it. it makes for an easier bedtime, but he'll be grumps in the evening.

brynna's first line of defense is her mouth...she's often trying to bite caleb when he takes something or pushes her out of the way. we keep scolding her about it, and hitting her mouth, but it hasn't set in that she shouldn't do it. she hasn't gotten him a good one again yet, but it's just a matter of time, especially since it's hot and he usually isn't wearing a shirt.

potty training

so i just looked up some information on potty training because my goal for this summer was supposed to be to get caleb potty trained. i really don't think it's going to happen this summer. first of all, caleb does not have an interest in his potty...in fact, he says no everytime i ask him if he wants to use the potty. also, he doesn't pull up or down his pants on his own, which is supposed to be one of the signs. he's in a relatively obstinate stage right now, so we'll see.

even after reading some stuff, i'm still not sure how i would proceed with training him. i've heard things like let him go naked or just in bebs and he'll soon learn that he doesn't like peeing on himself and will learn. actually, this might work for him because he's not big on being "dirty." i've seen kate use m&ms as rewards for going in the potty. i heard about putting a cheerio in the toilet so it becomes like a game where he aims for it while peeing.

i'm kind of scared to even begin, but i should also remember that things like taking away his paci and transitioning him to his bed were relatively painless, so maybe this will be too.

maybe for the hell of it i'll do brynna at the same time. bwahaha, yea right.

fighting

the fighting between the sibs has begun. caleb is becoming a big bully to his sister, shoving, pushing, poking and boxing her out, and brynna is crying more and more. she also bit him today. he must have been trying to kiss or hug her, because she got him on the back of the neck. it must have been hard because he cried and you could see teeth marks. dave scolded her and at first she just looked at him, but when he pointed his finger at her and said, NO, she started to cry. caleb has started to say "sorry sis" whenever we scold him, but it's very insincere. i spanked his hand hard and he immediately said, "sorry sis," at which point i had to turn around and laugh, while dave cracked up across the room.

picnic at the playground

gyoza, rice balls, tuna tofu patties, roasted veggies

tried to do a picnic at corp today, but it didn't really work out. first of all, we went right next to the playground, which was a bad idea because the kids didn't want to eat, they wanted to play. dave and i took turns trying to eat, but we had to rush and just decided to finish up when we got home. at least they had fun...we chose the playground with the least amount of kids, and caleb ended up playing with a set of triplets about his age. brynna, of course, charged everywhere and didn't want to hold hands.

prior to the park we took the kids to see emily for the first time! i didn't want the kids to touch her, but at least they got to see her and i got to carry her!!! it seems like so long ago that these two were that little!

remembering

i'm really not good at remembering things. i seriously sometimes feel like lucy in 50 first dates. yesterday we were watching a movie and i was acting all surprised at things (cuz i honestly was, even though i've seen the movie a couple times) and dave was asking me if i was being serious because he couldn't understand how i couldn't remember what had happened in the movie. i'm re-reading a book that i just read earlier this year, and so much is new to me all over again. my memory sucked prior to being a mommy, and now that i am a mommy, it sucks even more.

anyways, now that my bff just had her baby, i wanted to go back and remember what the first few weeks with caleb were like. i knew they sucked, but i didn't remember every single detail...so i went back to look at what i wrote...whoa. as momentous and wonderful as having caleb was, it sure did suck!

comparing my experience with caleb to my experience the second time around with brynna...wow again. it was soooooooooo much easier, physically and emotionally, with brynna. the pregnancy with her wasn't as easy (with morning sickness and gestational diabetes that i didn't have with caleb), but the birth and afterwards were a million times easier. gosh.

i watched caleb's birth video with tash today...and it was sooooo funny to see her reaction. she was squirming, screaming, burying her face in a pillow...she said it's a good thing she wasn't actually there cuz she probably would have gotten thrown out of the room because of making too much noise. i texted her after we dropped her off and told her i was still laughing to myself about her reaction and she said that she thinks she'll just be a virgin for life cuz she doesn't want to go through what she saw! woohoo, plan worked! hehe. i told her she doesn't have to be a virgin for life...just until she's 30...lol!!!

stuff i notice now that i'm at home

my mom taught brynna the sign for milk...caleb never picked up any signs, but she picked it up pretty quickly. the problem, however, is that she asks for her milk about a million and one times a day. and the irritating part is that she will sometimes ask for her milk, then run away from you after you go and get it for her. she's just being a bossy little thing and trying to see if she can get her way with you...lol.

brynna also has the cutest facial expressions ever. her only words thus far are "no" and "wow". oh, and "mum mum". whatever you are eating, she'll come over and want to have some too. she's very adventurous and risky...her favorite thing now is to climb up on top of the horsey thing and bounce on it. she also thoroughly enjoys throwing her head and body backwards while standing on the couch. and she likes to sit on your stomach and bounce hard, or stand on your chest and jump, or sit on my neck/chest and squeeze my face with her thighs...she thinks that's hilarious.

caleb is still thoroughly obsessed with trucks. if given his way, he'd be on the computer watching trucks from the time he wakes up in the morning so we have to keep the computer off and tell him no until later on in the day. he also loved watching a dora episode i had dvr'd which was about rescuing an ice cream truck...but somehow the stupid dvr thing erased it...actually, i'm glad cuz i was tired of that one. the books we read every night are non-fiction (boring!! lol)...super size, about all the biggest trucks there are, power lifting, about the machines that can lift a lot, and if i could drive a dump truck. so not entertaining to me, but whatever. he's pretty adept at using his loader and lifting "rocks" (rolled up little balls of paper) into his dump truck. that will seriously entertain him for long periods of time.

i gotta find some fun stuff for these guys to do this summer (and for me to do too). we should start taking some walks or something, but it's kinda hard cuz i don't trust leaving the safety of our area and venturing into the ghetto. i wish we had some kind of playground here on our property too. i should actually get some bubbles for them cuz they love playing with that at their grandparent's house.

another thing i love about being home during the day is getting so many chores done. so much to clean after neglecting it all year long. i told dave that it's actually much better that he go in to school because if he were staying home, no chores would get done at all.

summer sleeping

so since my mom has been gone, our sleeping arrangement has been altered. dave sleeps in our room with brynna, and i sleep in my mom's room with caleb. caleb falls asleep with me on my mom's bed and then i move him over to his own bed (when i remember, which is usually when he falls or nearly falls on the floor...lol). when my mom was here, caleb would fall asleep with her and she'd move him. i actually really, really like falling asleep with caleb next to me. it's much better than trying to fall asleep with a hella loud snorer next to me. bwahahaha.

dave puts brynna to bed in her crib...but by the morning she's usually in bed with him. she still wakes up at night to drink milk and if we don't catch her before she crawls out of her crib, she'll stand at the edge of the bed and scream until she's let up. my mom wants us to fix this situation before she gets back...i just don't know how to fix it. brynna is like me...i think her love language is physical touch...even if it just means her feet touching our face...lol.

since dave is the one going in to teach this summer (i'm supposed to go in, but these smart math kids intimidate me...not-so-smart math kids, i can handle...smart math kids...nope), i should actually be with brynna so i can wake up with her, but she seriously will not sleep in her crib if i'm in the room. she'll yell and scream and put up an intense fight if i'm in the room while she's going to sleep. if dave's in the room with her, though, she'll go to sleep in the crib. i guess we could switch after she goes to sleep...but i'm not going to suggest it...hehe. i guess i could also leave caleb after he goes to sleep...but i'm usually asleep before him most times so i dunno how that will work.

i must say...i do feel a lot more rested thus far...lol!

naughty boy

i need to start reading up on disciplining two-year olds. caleb's "terrible twos" seem to have started...with the throwing himself on the ground (though we laugh because he picks his spot pretty carefully and doesn't throw himself so hard that he'll hurt his head), throwing objects, and just being a little butt every so often.

of course, a lot of times it coincides with being tired because of not taking a nap or being told NO or ENOUGH. his addiction with trucks often fuels his tantrum, either when told to put his trucks away, that he's had enough of watching trucks on the computer, or that he can't watch his dora episode with trucks for the five millionth time.

he's also started to be a bigger bully to brynna. he'll elbow her out of the way, grab her hand roughly, or push her...again, most often when it relates to her taking or playing with trucks that he doesn't want her to have.

recently he pushed a bowl of soup i was going to give him over, which resulted in him getting whacked and put in his bed (where he fell asleep). he also pushed over my computer, which resulted in another whack and being put in his bedroom. i'm not the pacifist, no hitting kind of parent...if he deserves a whack, he's going to get one (though i haven't quite polished my hit, and it often ends up being an ineffective pat on the hand...have to work on that). i haven't implemented a true time out yet either. i just need to stop his insolent behavior before it gets out of hand. i haven't given him a full-of-rage yell yet, cuz i'm afraid that it will scare the crap out of him..lol. any suggestions welcomed.