thankful for...

hmm...never do one post on what i'm thankful for so now that i have some "free" time, let me think about this...

• thankful for a husband who deals with my irrational behaviors, is agreeable to pretty much anything i demand, has unending patience but lets me know when i'm beyond ridiculous, is a wonderful daddy...and everything else that he does for me and our family that i probably show no appreciation for...
• thankful for healthy, happy, loving babies who i can look at and truly feel like i've accomplished something good in my life
• thankful for a mom who up and moves to oahu because i don't think i could trust my kids with anyone else and who lives with the four of us in a tiny little apartment even when she has a house all to herself on maui
• thankful for in-laws who take our kids almost every sunday so dave and i can do what we need or want to do
• thankful for a completely non-traditional family that helps me to understand my kids at school and their non-white-picket fence lives better
• thankful for best friends who keep me sane and on the right track
• thankful for my kids at school...after feeling a bit burnt out these past two years, these kids remind me of why i really do love teaching and connecting with my kids
• thankful for a career i love, coworkers (for the most part) i enjoy, and a teaching situation that is pretty much all i could ask for
• thankful that fantasy football will be over in a few weeks and my husband promised me that this is his second to the last season...bwahahaha 

little miss

brynna is talking more now...hope she starts to enunciate a little bit better, though, because i think we understand her cuz we know what she's trying to say, but i don't think most people would understand what she's saying. 

she's in the phase where she wants you to kiss every little part of her that gets an owie...i remember caleb going through that phase too. 

she's so destructive...if the books are nicely placed in the bin, she finds nothing more pleasurable than flinging them all out of the bin. 

she does not like to have her hair put up in ponytails and would much rather have her wild mane making her look like a crazy girl. 

she has the sweatiest head imaginable, which makes her crazy hair look even crazier. 

her devious little smile is funny...her sassy face is ridiculous. 

she rarely gives out kisses and doesn't like to cuddle...but she loves to have her foot touching you to let her know you're there. 

she's the wildest hard head ever, and even though i never wanted to have a daughter, i'm soooo in love with this little miss crazy. 

talk talk talk

hard to imagine that at one point we wondered if we would have to have a speech therapist for caleb.  he started talking a little bit later, but boy, since he started, he sure hasn't stopped.  it's so interesting to have actual conversations with this little boy and to hear the things that seem to come straight out of left field. 

a couple funny examples...

• my mom cleaned the fan, and when she put it back together he remarks, "It's so beautiful!"  
• we often say to him..."Mommy love Caleb?  Daddy love Caleb?" and so on, and he often comes back with "Papa love Baba"...which, if you know my family, that's hilariou

his favorite song is the alphabet and he sings it incessantly...and somehow, i notice it most when we're watching sports.  we were watching our kids play basketball one day and he stood there for pretty much the entire second half singing his abc's.  last night at football he kept singing and singing...seriously did not shut up for the whole second half again!  hmm...maybe he sings when he's bored...cuz he does sing before he goes to sleep sometimes. 

the most irritating things he's saying recently is his whole trip with, "I can do it, I can do it," while whining and starting to cry every time we do something that he wanted to do (for example, today he pitched a fit because i put his doodoo diaper in a plastic bag, which he wanted to do).  he also says, "No!" when i tell him not to do something, which comes out sounding like he's being defiant but i'm not quite sure if he's really trying to be defiant or just doesn't know what else to say. 

it's always interesting to see just what will come out of this little boy's mouth. 

solving the night probs

since brynna's nightly outbursts, dave and i have tried to get creative in terms of what could help it.  we tried having her sleep on the bed...that's hit or miss.  tried just giving her the milk when she starts crying...sometimes it helps, sometimes if she's in her funk she still screams and has a fit.  now dave and i switched sides of the bed again so that we could see if she sleeps better with me next to her...again, hit or miss.  the sucky part, though, is that for some reason, sleeping on that side of the bed means that the ceiling fan is blasting me in the face and now my nose is messed and my ears are getting all plugged.  today i couldn't get my ear to pop for about ten minutes and it was driving me freakin' bananas. 

i was reading online that night terrors could possibly be caused by lack of sleep...so maybe putting her down to bed earlier or making sure she naps well.  problem is, she naps like a champ.  she can easy take one two hour nap and another short nap during the day.  still, i told dave maybe we should start putting them down earlier.  the only bad part about that is that the earlier we put them down, the longer caleb is in the room bothering my  mom whie she's watching her korean.  lol. 

night terrors = terrible nights

seriously...brynna was JUST starting to sleep the whole freakin' night through...four days straight and then we had to evacuate our house for three nights and sleep at dave's parent's house because of the fumigation of our building.  of course, the sleeping arrangement up there was different, so brynna ended up on the bed with us...and ever since then, she's been waking up SCREAMING bloody murder in the middle of the night.  out of the blue, she'll sit up and start screaming and if we try to touch her or console her she just gets more pissed off and screams louder.  eventually she'll stop and go back to sleep, but then she'll have little whimper fits at random times after that.  last night i told dave to let her sleep on our bed to see if that would help.  she woke up screaming, but was more easily consoled and went back to sleep quickly.  however, sometime in the night she kicked dave in the face pretty hard and he got super pissed.  don't know how we're going to sleep tonight.  we also had her not drinking milk during the night, but we're back to giving her some milk to try to help calm her down.  we gotta figure it out...my mom insists that it's cuz we give in, and i know it is, but when your baby is freakin' screaming bloody murder, it's hard to roll over and ignore her.