6 Weeks

I just realized I never posted this.  Hudson is 8 weeks now:

Hudson is 6 weeks old today.  Time has gone by so fast having two kids, that I can't believe I totally forgot to take monthly pictures like I did with Ryter.  Here is Hudson's first picture with his Monkey.  If he's anything like Ryter he'll be bigger than this Monkey before we know it!

Things have been going well for the most part.  If I could take each child and report on how they're doing as an individual I'd say Hudson is a baby so he doesn't do much but sleep.  I get up once at 12 and once at 4 to feed him.  I try to stay awake until 12 or at least crash while watching tv so that my 12:00 waking feels more like I'm still awake and not waking in the middle of the night.  He's a great baby.

Ryter is dealing with it all in his own way.  He's good in his new bed and rarely falls out, but without a side on the bed he's inclined to get out at the first eye opening so night time sleeping ends at 6 a.m. and naps are much shorter at somewhere between 45 min and 1.5 hours.  He's started hitting quite a bit on kids at the playground, kids we know, and Hudson too.  I guess we just wait this out and continue to repeat that hands are not for hitting.  I've been told it's normal and he'll grow out of it so I'm just waiting for the day we all wake up (at 8 a.m.) and hitting is a thing of the past.

Having two kids is crazier than I ever imagined.  The house is always a disaster, dishes are always piled on the dirty side of the sink, and half the time we have pizza for dinner.  Ryter eats by himself a lot while I try to figure out a schedule for feeding Hudson that doesn't involve feeding him while I'm cooking dinner or sitting down at the dinner table.  I seriously think it's impossible.  My heart breaks when I look at the back of that little blonde head sitting all by himself at our gigantic 8 person dining table.  He seems to eat when he's not bothered by anyone else around, so I guess I can look at it as letting him eat alone is better for his health.  Makes me feel a little better.

*having trouble with YouTube here so click on "Spaghetti" below.

Spaghetti

Rodan + Fields

So, I recently picked up a job.  Yeah, not something I really thought about doing right after having a new baby, but it seemed like the right time.  About a year ago my my aunt's husband's sister, otherwise known as my uncle's sister (lets just call her my aunt) brought up Rodan+Fields to me.  She wanted me to know about the power of selling these products and I brushed her off.  I wasn't interested at the time.  We had just moved into our house, I was pregnant, sick, tired, and drowning in boxes and unpainted surfaces.

My first thought was, ugh tupperware-like parties, don't people hate those?  I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to sell the product, I didn't want to talk about selling the product, I didn't want to humor anyone while they talked to me about buying or selling the product.  I just didn't want anything to do with it.  It was all based off the idea that people roll their eyes when a direct sales party is mentioned.  Well, along about three months ago my mom started using the product and it turns out it freakin' really works...like really works to smooth away lines and wrinkles.  Right then and there my eyes stopped rolling.

Sooooeeeewwwww, I decided to open my mind.  Not necessarily about the product because who doesn't want to get rid of whatever wrinkle they've got whether it be a lot or not so much, but to the idea of selling it.  I've got one kid at 2+ years old and he's having a super tough time in the terrible twos/new baby brother area and he needs an outlet as much as I do.  Well, when I decided he needed that and the only way I could give it to him was to get my butt in gear and either sell some lame crafty thing at the next street fair or climb on board this Rodan+Fields train, I decided to climb on board.

My big blue box arrived yesterday full of all of the skin care regimens I need to make this business grow!

I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I have my own kit to use on my skin and I'm really excited to start before and progress photos!  I'll be posting them here.

My website is lnaslenas.myrandf.com.  If anyone is interested in purchasing any of the products, wants to hear about the products, have a one-on-one, or an event let me know.  You can also become an independent consultant yourself!

Here are a couple of photos of my peanuts!

A Big Bed for a Big Brother

We've graduated to Stage 2 with the crib.  The side is now off of Ryter's bed and we're working day and night to get him to stay in his bed.  He started climbing out of his crib last week in the morning and it just went from there.  Pretty soon it was nap time that he was climbing out and also at night when it was time for bed.  We decided to take the side off when he bumped his head on the wall or dresser or bed or something.  He came down stairs with pink eyebrow and forehead so we went for it.  I've been dreading this moment because I knew that everything would change and I couldn't imagine it would be for the better.

The first night we spent 2 hours putting him back to bed before he finally crashed around 10 p.m.  The next night he was down by 9:30 and last night by 8:30.  Vain discovered that leaving the room and hoping that he would stay in his bed wasn't working so he stayed in the room in the chair until Ryter fell asleep.  That worked, so we've been doing that every night.  It takes a bit for him to fall asleep, but he doesn't get out of bed so he actually has wind down time that he wasn't getting by constantly getting up and running down the hall.

Mornings are a different story.  He got up at 5:30 yesterday which was so not cool!  Lets just hope as the evenings get better, so do the mornings.

Hudson

Well, life is crazy to say the least.  With Ryter I was writing a blog post in the hospital and this time it took me two weeks to get to it.

We welcomed Hudson Naslenas on August 20, 2013 at 4:59 a.m.  He was 7 lbs, 2 oz and 20 inches long. A little heavier than Ryter, although not by much, and the same height.  

This labor was truly a miracle compared to my first experience, although I never realized how tough the first one was until I had the second one.  I spent Monday the 19th mostly in my bathroom caulking and installing tile on the wall because I knew the baby was coming soon...as in that day or the next.  (Needless to say, a blog post on bathroom week part 2 is not going to be coming for quite a while.) I woke up feeling the same way I did when I went into labor with Ryter.  I packed my bag when Vain got home from work that night and was awoken at 12:45 a.m. with a very painful contraction.  6 minutes later the next one came and they continued to get closer over the next hour.  I called my mom at 1:30 to come stay with Ryter.  We left for the hospital at 3 a.m., I got my epidural at 4 a.m. and we had a beautiful baby boy less than an hour later.

My recovery was really insane!  I went to a party at my parents house the day I got home from the hospital, was driving right away, and went to a wedding on Saturday.  I don't at all feel like I had a baby except for the jiggly belly left behind.

Hudson is a great baby.  He sleeps like a dream.  I only get up once in the middle of the night to feed him and he eats about every 3 hours during the day.  If he's not eating, he's sleeping.  He's also really cool with being put down so I can spend time with Ryter.  Time I really was worried about not being able to have right away.

Vain has been home for two weeks and goes back to work tomorrow.  We will miss him very much around here.  He has been a great help, for Ryter especially.  Our poor little guy has been really emotional over the past couple of weeks.  The first few days were really rough, but he's coming around to Hudson now and gives lots of kisses and tells him how much he loves him.

I can't believe it's been two weeks already and pretty soon I'll be saying that I can't believe it's been 2 years!

New Bathroom Week-Part 1

Ryter was gone for two weeks so my plan was to redo the bathroom.  It ended up being a bigger job than I expected, but it's mostly done.  So far, we've replaced the swinging door with a sliding door to make a little more room in the bathroom.  All of the wood trim associated with the swinging door was removed and filled with wood filler.  Sanding is coming, but that doesn't affect the function of the bathroom so it's last on the list.

trim on the silver track is still to come

Vain took a look at moving the plumbing for the cold water so the vanity can contain all of the pipes behind the cabinet. He wasn't sure about the job, so I hired a plumber to come and take care of it.  It was quick and painless for him, although I'm not sure I could say the same if Vain and I would have been involved :)

As part of the destruction that is happening in the bathroom, the weird closet/mirror/shutter door is now gone, as are the silly shelves that don't all go to the back of the closet.  I checked for insulation in the walls inside the closet and it does not exist.  Behind the closet wall is the siding.  This is not good.  It explains why our bathroom is so cold in the winter. We're basically bathing outside. As of right now, the plan is to insulate and install pre-made cabinets from Target.

The electrician came and moved the outlet away from the faucet and also added another outlet down low inside the vanity for Vain's shaver to charge so that doesn't have to sit out on the counter all of the time.  I think in the end, that will end up being my most favorite part of the bathroom!  As you can see, a new light fixture has been added and the bathroom has also been painted a very pale pink instead of the gross green we've been reflecting onto our skin for the past 9 months.

This project is taking a lot longer than expected and Ryter comes home today. The goal is just to get a working sink back in here by the end of the weekend.  Part 2 of my post will include tiling, the worst project in the history of man!  Lets just say, it's a little like child birth and I won't be doing it again until I only remember the experience as delightful!

The Last Week

Today marks the first day of the last week of my pregnancy. Unless this baby is late like Ryter, I should have some result by next Friday.  I have one day left before Ryter gets home from Iowa and my only hope was that I'd keep this baby in until then.  I want Ryter to be here and come to the hospital to see us and be here when we get home.  Happily, that will happen.

I'm not nearly as large this time at this stage as I was last time, but baby is measuring right on schedule so it must just be hiding a little bit more.  I'm having some irregular contractions at night and really have been for the last month. I think it's just because I move around all day and by night when I relax I start to notice them more.

Vain and I had dinner on Tuesday for my birthday and the waitress very matter-of-fact asked me "you're having a girl?".  She asked it like she knew what she was talking about.  I told her we actually didn't know what we were having and she just said "it's a girl", smiled, and walked away.  Well, when I was pregnant with Ryter we had a lady in the Phoenix airport do the same thing except she said boy and she was right.  We shall see this time.

new baby 2013

Ryter 2011

35 Weeks

Wow!  I can't believe it's been 10 weeks since the last time I made an entry.  It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but things are just happening so fast around here. It's summer and the days go by so quickly trying to find enough time to play outside and in the pool.  I'm 35 weeks pregnant which means this baby is coming in 5-6 weeks whether we're ready or not.  For the most part, we're ready.  We've done this before so any day would be a great day for a baby.  Ryter has officially been moved into his new room and the baby has a room of his/her own so I guess that means we're ready.

Ryter turned 2 on July 14 and we had a little family party for him. He's getting so big and turning into a real live boy.  He's expressing his opinions on pretty much everything and speaking in full sentences for many things.  Every time he uses more than one word at a time I can't believe I'm actually having a conversation with this little guy and then he surprises me with more words and sometimes words I didn't intentionally teach him like "damn it".  Opps :)  Apparently he is hearing everything I'm saying, he just doesn't always choose to listen to what I'm telling him.

I had a little scare last week when he decided to climb out of his crib during nap time, come down the stairs, and out the front door.  He hasn't tried to climb out since, but I did find him in his crib one day when I left him out of it playing on the floor while I went to the bathroom.  That was interesting as well.  It looks like taking the side off of the crib is in our near future.  That's ok because lifting a 32 lb child out of a crib when you're 8 1/2 months pregnant is really difficult and I don't even want to talk about changing the sheets on a crib mattress!  Why does that process have to be more difficult than child birth?

As far as house progress goes, we've torn out our basement bathroom walls and floor to get rid of mold and asbestos we found when we had a minor toilet leak.  Turns out somebody knew about a leak and never fixed it a long time ago.  Mold?  Yuck!  Now we have a working toilet in a storage room.  It's very chic, very college housing.  Eventually it'll be a laundry and bathroom combo with actual walls, but for now we take a seat next to Christmas decorations.

 
Our upstairs bathroom got a new sliding door and the bathroom feels so much bigger now that the door doesn't swing into it! I ordered a new vanity that is much bigger and will give us counter top to use finally.  Being the only full bathroom in the house, we really need a more functional space.  There are so many criteria to having a new vanity in this bathroom and this little beauty is for sure, without a doubt in my mind, the ONLY thing out there that can be used so we can avoid custom cabinetry and a counter.  I'm so excited!

My back porch got new screens and some furniture, thanks to mom and dad, so it's liveable now too.

The front entry got a face lift by adding some cabinets and a shoe bench.  It feels so much bigger now!

As can be seen in many of the photos, things are about 7/8 finished in each and every project.  I've been so desperate for function in most of the projects around here that once they're almost complete I move on to something else that's driving me crazy.  So, Ryter is taking a big leap and going to spend 2 whole weeks with Baba and Dukas in Iowa.  It's huge for us and huge for him, but we've already started talking about it and he's very excited.  I will be able to finish up all of those loose ends while he's gone which will be a gigantic help!  When baby arrives, the house will be finished except for the big projects (bathroom and kitchen).