Sunday, September 7, 2014

Stress and cleaning

Lately because of all the possibilities of a move to the mainland, but yet it hasn't happened, I am stressed. We have basically been job searching for about 9-10 months now and it is exhausting. Not only do we have to look into how good of a job it would be, but also the city. They are all cities we have never lived in and also a lot of cities we have never even visited. That takes a lot of homework looking at the cost of living, the crime rates, the school systems, the neighborhoods, the housing market, the job itself, the company, how far of a drive it is to family, what activities the city offers, the average temperature, etc.

Because of all this research we have been doing over the past 9ish months we haven't had much time for anything else besides for the kids and doing some fun things, so we have been putting cleaning aside. Yikes!! Besides for the floors, the laundry, dishes, toilets and kitchen counters everything else has been just in wipe down mode and hasn't had a deep cleaning since before Amelia was born 10 months ago. Today though I decided to take my stress out on the house instead of the wonderful husband and kids and do some major cleaning.

One thing I have learned since having kids is white cabinets are a major no-no unless you have the time to scrub them weekly. They show everything especially those peanut butter and jelly marks from little fingers looking for more food. (Don't judge, having a spoon fed baby and a 1 yr old eating at the same time means lots of pb&j's and sticky fingers all over the house, until I get a second to clean them after the youngest is done eating too). When I buy a house if the cabinets are white that will be one of the first things I change and paint them to a dark grey or olive green/grey tint. If you can't see those PB&J marks that means they aren't there right?? Yeah, baby.

We basically have our future house designed already, just need to find the job and move! We cannot wait! We have been putting so many things on hold here. Knowing we could move at anytime made us not want to buy anything. Kids toys for example, Aleigh had outgrown most of the toys she has. Since Christmas she has only gotten 2 new toys, one she has already grown tired of and the other she still loves. The rest of the toys are just blah to her sadly. We also bought a few new books.

Aleigh makes me laugh when we read one book because it is one of those touch and feel books and there is a lot of textures in it. Well when Amelia was a little younger we would take her hand and guide her hand to feel the textures. Since Aleigh saw that, every time now for the past 6 months, she will grab her own hand with the other hand and guide that hand over the textures just like we do with Amelia, as if she can't rub her hand on it by itself. Its so stinkin' cute.

Another cute Aleigh moment is before bed after we finished reading books one day she ran to the living room and stood looking out the back door pointing to the sky making her "uh" noise and then waved bye bye so I said the sun is sleeping now so it is time for bed and she ran to her bedroom after passing a wave to the dog. Ever since then she added that to the routine, so we have to say "bye bye" to the sun everyday before bed or she will put up a fuss if we forget. Cute kid, cute kid.

Amelia has been such a stinker lately. Ha, no she is really the sweetest little thing to walk the planet I must say. She is really starting to show her personality though and will now tell you if she doesn't like something, like when Aleigh takes something from her.

Amelia has also never been much of an eater and she would be happy probably eating 15 oz. a day but then wanting to eat another 10 oz. at night because nighttime isn't any fun. The past couple weeks I have put the little Miss. on a strict eating schedule to try to cut out the over night feeds. A few months ago we started reducing the ounces in her overnight bottle, every couple weeks we would reduce it 1 oz. about 2 weeks ago we got it down to 1 (2oz ) bottle a night. We thought she would just stop waking for it since it was nothing and she obviously wasn't hungry. That was what an "expert" online had said. Yeah, not for little Miss. So now for the past 3 nights we have just started to soothe her in other ways instead of the bottle. This has meant pretty restless nights.

Aleigh we did this at about 6-7 months old because that girl would eat so much during the day we knew she didn't need a nighttime feed. Amelia on the other hand needed it until we finally buckled down and started feeding her at scheduled times to be sure she would eat enough. Aleigh we also just took it away cold turkey and would just calm her by holding her, this was not a pleasant time. Amelia we tried a more gradual approach because they are sharing a room and we didn't want Aleigh's sleep to be too interrupted. The gradual approach didn't really work anyways and now we just had to say "no" to the bottle so hopefully she will start sleeping through the night soon.

Amelia is a walking, babbling and smiling queen. She walks almost everywhere now. She babbles way more than Aleigh ever did. She is also constantly giving us really silly faces just to make us laugh. She has such a personality.

Amelia is not doing too well with finger foods, but she will get there. Right now she just puts the food in her mouth then immediately spits it back out with a silly look on that beautiful face. She just doesn't have much of a want for any kind of food so it isn't a surprise that she could care less about finger foods. Except for when Aleigh drops cheerios on the ground, those she will dive for, probably because she can follow Aleigh around (being active) and eating at the same time. Oh boy.  :)

I just love my little family. We just cannot wait to move back to the mainland and buy our first house! Hopefully we will be back before Christmas!

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