Sleeping in the Same Room

A couple of my friends have written about putting both of their kids in the same room or making changes to the room, so I thought I would follow suit and mention that the boys are FINALLY sleeping in the same room.

Matthew has been slumming it in a port a crib (also lovingly known as the Happy Cabana, that is what it says on the side of it, I swear!) in my office. I still can't believe he slept in there for almost 2 years. I really missed my office at night but truth be told it was good for getting me to not work late at night. I have to keep reminding myself that it is an option..if I want to.

Anyway, we had tried to get them to sleep in the same room a couple of times. The first time we tried was about a year ago and it went very lame. I think they handled 1 night fine but then Matthew was teething or something and woke Peter up and vice versa and I just kept giving up.

Sleep is so precious to me...I kept putting off the 1 room thing. But I was noticing that Matthew was getting a little big for the Happy Cabana...so I was hoping we might be able to figure something out soon.

I knew that they would be sharing a room on our vacation--they slept in the living room--Matthew in the port a crib and Peter on the sofa bed--so I thought maybe trying to get them to sleep in the same room beforehand would be a good idea.

So we tried it. They talked for the first 30 minutes and Peter kept telling Matthew to be quiet. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way by 45 minutes Matthew started crying, complaining that there were "shadows" in the room and it was "sary" (scary). I gave up...again...I wanted sleep. So I just put Matthew back in his crib.

When we went on vacation, they did great sleeping in the same room. We made a big deal about it and then when we got back from vacation, I decided to just keep it going. I am so glad I did because it was really no big deal.

I was a little concerned about the mornings. Peter tends to be like me and wakes up early. He has had a history of calling "Mommy" for like 20 minutes in the mornings. I have actually convinced him to stop this behavior, which I am quite thankful for. He now lays in bed, waiting for his green light to turn on. Sometimes Matthew even sleeps through Peter getting out of the room. One thing I have learned through this process--Matthew loves his bed and loves sleeping. There have been a couple of times recently where he has told us that he wants to go to bed. Maybe now that he has an actual bed he is excited to go to sleep! I think he is just like his daddy. :)

They both like sleep. As you can see here:

Preschool

***I wrote this the day of so I wouldn't forget about it. Since I am an anal blogger, I wanted to finish up our summer stuff before I posted this....

Peter started Preschool today at Rolling Hills Covenant Church. I used to go there when I was in high school, so I was thankful to find that they have a wonderful preschool program at their church. Mike and I went to the orientation last week and he was more excited than I was for Peter to start.

About 2 months ago, I mentioned Preschool to Peter and he started crying and told me he didn't want to go. Since then I have been gradually trying to get him to be more excited about it. Since I went to RHCC as a kid, I still had some connections from the past and I figured out who he might be in his class. We had a day at the park. That was good. But he still wasn't completely figuring it out.

Last week, my mom found a great book at the library all about preschool. This seemed to really help Peter out a lot and he started getting more excited. He also started a catechism class at church which he enjoyed going to. I had to do a lot of explaining that the catechism class was not pre-school, but also exciting because it meant he was a big boy.

So today was the big day! The first day is a modified shortened schedule and they allow 1 parent to attend. Peter and I went from 1030am to 12pm. We were both a little nervous. I was nervous that he was going to cling to me the entire time and he was nervous that I was going to leave and I am sure a plethora of other things.

I had a lot of favorite things about today, but one of my most favorites was Mike calling to ask to talk to Peter shortly before we got ready to go. We got Mike on speaker phone and he told Peter how excited he was for him to go to Preschool. It was so sweet of Mike to think to do that and it was almost sweeter to watch Peter's face as he listened to his daddy encouraging him on his big day.

And then we were off! Matthew was quite sad to see us go....

Peter enjoyed trying to find horses at the stables during the drive to preschool. I was so thankful that he found one, because he tends to get upset if he doesn't see one. I wanted him to be in a great mood when we arrived at church.

We got out of the car and he held my hand as we walked toward the classrooms. He noticed a "garden lamb" (is all I can call it) and wanted to check it out for a moment. We snapped a pic on our way out. I am sure he will roll his eyes at this picture in 10 years, but I think it is pretty cute...even if he does have kind of a dorky expression on his face. :)

Anyway, we signed in for Ms. Collen's class in the Rainbow Room. Ms. Colleen is really nice and I think Peter will really like her. As soon as we entered the room, I knew things would go great because he dropped my hand and went to go see what this cubby thing was all about. He didn't quite get what a "cubby" was for and I am sure I confused him further when I put my purse in it. Oh well.

Then he found the train table. And I pretty much watched him play with that for 1 hour. 

Working hard, hammering down some plastic nails into a foam square. Preschool is tough work!

At some point we all went outside and the kids got to play on the playground. There is another class next to his and they have both classes play together during their "recess."

I was really impressed because he went and played on all the stuff and didn't really ask my help with any of it. He still can't pedal on a tricycle but he spent a lot of time pushing himself around.

It was so weird to stand outside with the other moms--most of whom I had known a decade or more--and watch our kids play together.

Playing at the water table...

Eventually, we all went back inside and the kids played some more. Ms. Colleen played a special song and everyone cleaned up the toys. I am going to have to play that song around here...Then Ms. Colleen read the kids a story, "What Color is Your Underwear?". Kind of a random first choice, but the kids loved it.

At one point in the story, she asked the kids how many legs they had. Peter quickly replied loudly and proudly, "THREE!" The teacher chuckled as did the moms and one of them said to me, "I am sure his daddy taught him that." It was pretty funny. Hopefully he gets that straightened out over the next few months of school. :)

And then, that was it. First day over. I was so relieved that it went well. And I think he was pretty proud of himself too.

He wanted to check out the church building afterwards, so we walked upstairs above the classrooms and he went into one of the big meeting rooms. It was kind of funny to walk around the church campus with him--just after spending so much time there in high school. without children.

We came home and Omi had made us both a yummy lunch. Peter gave Matthew a big hug (well, I kind of encouraged him to) and told Matthew, "I missed you! You are my best friend" (Sorry, Kendall). It was pretty sweet.

I thought it would be a good idea to get Peter a backpack--just so he would have something to put in his "cubby." Mike went out and got a backpack for each of the boys on his way home from work. Since Thomas the Tank is the latest craze for the boys, he got some Thomas backpacks.

They loved the backpacks! Peter was so excited to put his on and Matthew kept asking if he could go swimming. I know. He thought it was a life jacket. Sooooo sweet!

It is fun to see your kids grow up and start new things. But it is also bittersweet because it means they are growing up. All in all, it was a great day.

Vacation

 

We had a blast on our vacation. I realized that I needed one pretty badly. I think the last time I had 10 consecutive days off was 3 years ago when Peter was born. Yikes. We've done little trips here and there but with the boys being so little, I just haven't taken a lot of time off of work and gone on a proper vacation. Yikes again.

We kept it simple and stayed in Rancho Mirage at some villas that a friend of ours owns through a timeshare thing. We don't quite get how it works, all we know is that we love our friend very much and we LOVE to stay at this place. Sure, it is 100plus temperatures but it is just so fun to eat a leisurely breakfast, head to the pool, eat a leisurely lunch, head to the pool, and eat a leisurely dinner. As you can see...there is a lot of eating and swimming involved.

Matthew liked the floating cars I brought for them....and he liked Leigh as his "driver"

Peter loved playing with all the water toys

Usually I have "withdrawls" from my Blackberry when I start a vacation. I don't feel right that it is not by my side and I have an urge to check my work e-mail on my laptop (I disable the work email from coming through onto my blackberry). This time, I didn't care where my phone was and I had less than 0 urge to look at my work e-mail. It was awesome. And a reminder of how much I needed a break from work.

We spent the first couple of days with some good friends, worshiped at a local church in Palm Desert, and just relaxed. The boys watched A LOT of Thomas the Tank Engine, Veggie Tales, Cars, and Toy Story. I figure we are relaxing by doing the stuff we like to do...so why not let them do what they love to do? Besides...it allowed me to read a fantastic book called, "The Help." It was a great novel and one of those classic stories where when you are finished you are sad to leave the characters behind.

About 2 days in, my parents and Tante Heidi and Uncle Leigh arrived. They spent 3 nights with us. It was really fun to get in some more visiting time with Tante Heidi and Uncle Leigh.

One crazy thing that happened was the facility we were staying in lost power for 12 hours. I guess the local SCE had to do some repair work and as a result our place was going to be without power for 12 hours starting at 10pm on a Monday till 10am the next day. I We were a little concerned about how it would go. The air conditioners would shut off obviously....thankfully the resort was extremely accommodating. They brought us bags of ice, flashlights, glow sticks and offered us 50% off at breakfast at their hotel the next day. We had the choice of staying in the hotel, but the thought of packing up the port a crib and everything else sounded like a big pain. So we decided to gamble. Everything went great except for once in the night when Peter woke up and freaked out it was pitch black. It literally was pitch black. I was scared too! Mike went and helped him out and he ended up being fine. And the room never got unbearably hot.

At breakfast the next morning

We spent a morning, or should I say HOT morning at the Living Desert Museum. I had promised Peter we would see camels and was super bummed to see the camels don't make an appearance until October. Needless to say, this has created a caution within me to not overly promote any attraction we go to going forward. He was pretty bummed about the camels, but he got over it. We saw giraffes, zebras, and a lot of other stuff. I have a hard time remembering because I was sweating buckets while the boys tromped all over as though it was 70 degrees.

giraffes!

our tour guide

there was a great model railroad that Matthew loved

My sister, her boyfriend, Mike, and I went to the outlets one day. It was fun to spend time with Heidi and Leigh. I gave Leigh an education on Icees and Pretzel Dogs. He did not seem to be impressed with the Icees but did like the Pretzel Dogs.

plotting their next move....

attack Gramps!

reading The Gruffalo with Tante Heidi (very fun book by the way)

Another night, Heidi and Leigh treated us all to dinner. That was super generous of them. And I can safely say that I had the strongest margarita ever that night. It was ridiculous. Guess I am used to the watered down Cadillacs at El Torito.

 

My family left on Thursday afternoon and we stayed until Saturday morning. It was really sad saying goodbye because my sister and Leigh were returning to Australia. To squash our sadness over their departure, we ate at one of our favorite restaurants, Roy's, for dinner.

I was a little nervous about how the boys would do--this was by far the fanciest place we had ever taken them to eat. It ended up being a very memorable night. Turns out the staff at Roy's is really kid friendly. As soon as we arrived they gave our boys toys to play with at the table (and they weren't cheap dentist toys, they were cool toys), an appetizer plate with quesadillas, apples, celery, and carrots, and at the end of the meal they brought them each a scoop of ice cream with a brownie. It was so sweet to see them so excited and even more awesome for us to eat food we love. After dinner we headed back and we all watched Toy Story 2 together. Good times.

By Friday the boys little feet were so worn out from being in the kiddie pool that their toes were bleeding...so our pool time was cut short and I was bummed. I will leave out the part where I tried to convince Mike to let them stay in the kiddie pool because we were having so much fun. We spent the rest of the day in our room, soaking up our last moments of freedom.

Saturday morning we packed up. It was kind of funny because we had planned to leave at 10am, thinking that check out was noon. At some point the housekeeping staff knocked on our door and informed us that check out was at 10. Yikes! We had to move fast to pack up a week's worth of stuff but we made it in the end.

On our way out of town we stopped at the local Children's Discovery Museum. It was pretty cute. They had a grocery store for the kids to play in and other scenarios--like a pet hospital. And they had a place where you could paint a car. Kind of random, but we had a good time.

at the grocery store. Peter filled his cart with fruit and vegetables. I found this entertaining as he never eats his veggies!

We were glad to be home..kind of. Peter kept saying he wanted to go back to our "little house" (that's what we were calling it) and that he wanted to be on vacation again. It took about 2 weeks for them to not want to watch TV 24/7. Who am I kidding? They still kind of want to watch it all the time. :)

I am so thankful that we were able to take a trip and I am definitely looking forward to our next vacation already!

Summer 2011 continued....

Well...I got bogged down by the summer and I neglected the blog...again. It is a good thing this blog doesn't have feelings because by this point it should feel like a battered woman. Oh well....I shall try again. :)

Our summer continued after Auntie Kristi's visit and we had a grand time--going to the beach, having friends over for dinner, and just enjoying all that summer has to offer.

We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. We had a nice dinner out and looked at our old wedding videos. It was fun!

August 23,1998

We were also VERY excited to see Tante Heidi and Uncle Leigh. For those of you who don't know, Tante Heidi lives in Australia. We talk to her on Skype quite a bit and when Peter learned that she was coming he was VERY excited. So excited that we had to make a countdown calendar for her arrival.

Tante Heidi fever. My mom (per my request) made these really cute shirts for the boys to wear.

Anyway, when she finally arrived (after a lot of delay from dumb fog), Peter was so happy to see her. I have never seen him hug someone like that! It was fun to see him be so excited to see someone, especially because it was my own sister.

this doesn't quite capture the immensity of Peter's hug...but it is close..

It's so fun to see Tante Heidi and Uncle Leigh!

It was also really great to get to know Leigh. Mike and I drove Heidi and Leigh around the Sunday afternoon that they arrived. We gave them the West LA tour--Santa Monica, UCLA, Diddy Riese, and of course In N' Out. Then we rushed back to our house for a little welcome home party for Heidi.

After that, we spent the week preparing to go on a week long vacation!