I am royally screwed

Because I can't blank-ety blank sleep!!!!!!!!! I've gone to bed many times and just cannot drift off. My brain is moving 100 miles a minute! Don't know what's happening. I've checked on Ashley and the boys many times tonight. I can hear Ashley's ticker going, she has barely moved a muscle and sleeping so peacefully. Maybe tonight she will sleep again. She has woken up every night between 1:30 & 2:30 so I figure I have about 22 minutes and I will be in the clear. Yeah right! She'll be up...as sure as the Pope is Catholic, Ashley will be up. And I will be a mess tomorrow. When I get overtired I get grouchy. Then I will laugh until I cry. Then I get feeling sick. Wash, rinse, repeat. This insomnia is a recipe for disaster. I could blow a "major-hindy" to quote a friend.

On a nicer note. I must give a Happy Birthday shout-out to Julie. My dear friend who has been my sanity saver many, many times! I don't know what I'd do without her to sound off to. Probably blow more major-hindy's. ;)

4 month sleep regression

Okay, so this waking up every 2-3 hours in the middle of the night now is for the birds but apparently it's fairly common. It all started Wednesday and we're in night four of this bullarky! I started googling 4 month old and got a bunch of hits on sleep regression. Scary comments - some kids didn't get better. Crap!!! My good sleeper from day 1 is now kicking my butt at 4 months. All I can say is thank goodness I don't have to work.

Tommy has an 8:00 baseball game in Millington so it's almost time to get up anyways.

Prime of my life...Prime of my life...Prime of my life...

The Best Medicine for letting your older kids go...

A new baby of course.

Last summer I had the helicopter Mommy post about how I was so leery about letting the boys have much freedom. Well with Ashley I've had to let my guard down a bit. I'm not just being neglectful but I have let Austin run amok at the ice arena when I've had to nurse Ashley or something. Today Austin had an eye appt. and I had to dash to the "contacts room" to feed her and Austin stayed with the doctor all on his own. He has to get glasses by the way but that's another post.

And the last couple days I've let Tommy hang out with the neighborhood kids until dusk. Last night it was just next door and I finally had to call to get him to come home. Tonight it was the neighbor a little ways down. I look out my front door and they are about a football field and a half away on the side street in our little circle. Every so often I would look and I could see his red baseball cap in the back yard but for the last 20 minutes or so when he was gone I kept looking out for him. Pretty soon I saw him trudging down their driveway, into the road and walking home. I was just watching him from the front porch and he had his shoes and socks in his hands (they'd gotten muddy) and the closer he gets I realize he is in his own little world singing something. Tommy LOVES singing by the way, I swear he is always singing something. He's embarrassed me a few times with his singing in fact because it's always something odd, sometimes inappropriate (Clarence Carter Strokin as a two year old on the way to Disney World with Grandma in the car comes to mind.) ;) Pretty soon the neighbor dog starts barking and he starts sprinting towards the house. It was quite comical, I start laughing and he finally realizes I've been watching him.

I guess in posting this, lately I've realized that Joe and I are in the prime of our lives. The boys are so much fun. Ashley is a doll. The boys are still young enough to love on and snuggle. Tommy especially is super affectionate, Austin not so much but you might get some sappy love from him if you catch him at the right moment. He just shows his love in strange ways, i.e. blocking doors so you can't leave, or hanging on your leg. Julie found this out Saturday. With Ashley I feel like the luckiest person in the world getting to experience all the joys, the wonder and awe of raising a perfectly healthy baby without taking it for granted like I maybe did with Tommy after all the trials and tribulations we went through with Austin and later Autumn Rose. We are all healthy generally speaking. Our parents are still doing well enough that they can enjoy their grand kids. Life is good. We're established and secure, much different from those volatile 20's where I think we still had a ton of growing up to do although we thought we were true adults. I've got to remember where I came from in the future when my kids are driving me crazy as teens/young adults. They'll turn out okay. (I hope) But for now, I'm thankful for where my life is. I'm thankful for everyday, but just wish they wouldn't pass by so quickly. I blinked and Tommy was 8. Even with a new baby, I'm not ready to let him go too far...just a quick run down the road is far enough for me.

The Haircut

So as Joe says I live a "transparent" lifestyle and yesterday was the "the haircut day" and I've been talking up this haircut for over a month now. The long hair was getting to be too much to handle every day with blow drying and straightening forever so it had to go. I always do this after having kids. I went very short a year after Austin was born and decided to grow it out one more time before getting old and needing to keep it short. i.e. 31. ;) I don't know why I thought 30 was old but now that I'm 31 I was clearly wrong. Maybe 40 is the "new old." Make it 60 actually. My beautician did a beautiful job cutting it, it looks exactly as I pictured it. But I know it's the wrong style for my face shape. But then again, my poor hairdresser has the worst job in the world because I'm never happy with how my hair looks.

Before



And now I present to you SpongeBob Squareface. My 8th grade haircut minus the poof bangs.

Oh what a beautiful morning...

I went to bed around 11:00 by midnight she was up and no mild soothing was going to work. She wanted to eat. In the middle of that I heard Austin howling about something. Thinking this was going to be the beginning of a nightmarish evening I walk to our bedroom with baby attached, flip on the lights and make Joe go up and deal with Austin. He was trying to get into his bed which if you saw via twitter he found every stuffed animal we had and put it on his bed. So Joe dealt with that. I put Ashley back to bed and go back to sleep. I think I only woke up once and looked at our monitor, saw it tick and drifted back to sleep. Finally around 6:30 she started yelling for me, I go up and am greeted by a great big smile. We survived.


...Everything's going my way!

Trepidation

The baby is upstairs in her crib. I REPEAT THE BABY IS UPSTAIRS IN HER CRIB!!!

If all goes well tonight I will be heading to Babies R Us tomorrow for some mesh crib bumpers to contain her little feet. She went down fairly easy after a very crabby day. Just a little squawking and she was out. She didn't nap well and was just a grouch. Maybe the time away from home on our little northern getaway was too much for her. I hope she sleeps okay. We have an Angel Care Monitor that will go off if it doesn't detect any movement from her after 20 seconds. Well it's already gone off twice because she has scooted all the way to the side of her crib and is sleeping sideways against the head of her crib. We're trying to adjust the sensitivity. Uh oh, it just went off again. Not sure how this is going to go. Maybe I just need to turn it off and have faith that all will be okay. She was fine in her pack-n-play up north and we didn't have a monitor. I just have a feeling I'll be running up there fairly often to check on her. But if she's sleeping well I guess that is all that matters. I'll let you know how it goes.

I can just hear her saying to herself where the heck did these buttheads put me?

Dodging Summer Boredom

With baseball of course! Tommy had a tourney this weekend with his 8 & under team and got 2nd place. He is also on the 9 & under team but didn't play with them because they were in a 10 & under tourney. Last week he had practice every night, sometimes 3 hours with both teams. He played pretty well but was by no means flawless. He played 2nd base and every time the ball would get hit to him my heart skipped a beat because he tends to throw wild and I just don't have the confidence with him on the field like I do when he is on the ice. Anyhoo, he'll stick with the 9's now since he played with them last year. I don't know, he says he'd rather ride the pine with the 9's then be great with the 8's. (Like my hokey rhymes?) I guess with him on the pine I have less stress. He's having fun though so I guess that is all that matters. And we are having fun hanging with great parents and watching America's favorite past time.

Down & Ready Reese!


Hoping to score from 3rd


The Reese Rockets


Sherri's puppies enjoy their day out at the game.


Runner Ups