What happen to the blogging???

Have you been wondering where I've been for the last week? Trapped in my own private toddler-tantrum-hell....that's where. :( Blegh! Yes....my sweet angel of a boy must've decided that he wanted to be Oscar the Grouch for Halloween and thought he'd better act the part too...two weeks early! Since even before I posted my newest montage last week (did you like that, by the way?), Luke has been more than a handful for me. Tantrums, whining, fits, screaming...you name it, he's been doing it. Where did my child go?????? Could someone please return him to me? I miss him.

I don't have time to go into the detail right now (its Halloween after all, and let's be honest...if you've talked to me on the phone this week, you already heard my plight!), but lets just say that his behavior lately has been enough to cause me to seriously question my parenting skills. Its crazy how such a young child can make you feel like such a failure! I've shed more than a few tears this week and had several 'breakdown' moments with Ty after the screaming has ceased from atop the stairwell each night at bedtime. :( So.....with all that happening 'round here, I haven't had either the time, nor the energy to sit and blog. His mood seems to have been better the last two days, after Ty and I decided on an improved, super-consistent, no-nonsense discipline plan. Not that we haven't been consistent in disciplining him, but sometimes there would be different consequences for the same offense (i.e. sometimes he would get a time-out for hitting or kicking, while other times, if the same offense was serious enough, he might get a swat on the hand or bum). Now however, the consequence will be the same each time...no matter what. And I'm throwing out my futile attempts to reason with him. I was doing much too much of that; thinking that because he is so bright, he was capable of being reasoned with. The truth of the matter is though, that he is still only 2 and a half. Reasoning typically doesn't work. Don't know why I thought it would. I, of all people, should know that.

So......all that to say I'm sorry to have gone MIA for over a week. I'm sure I'll have some cute Halloween pictures to share in the coming days, so be on a look out for those. As for now, I am off to dress my little Lukey Long Legs in his spider costume and head out the door to Grandma's work, then Meemaw's house and then to our friend Tami's house for dinner and trick-or-treating. Phew! Its a busy afternoon for us! Hope you all have a safe Halloween! I'll be looking for pictures from the rest of you too.....you know who you are! :)

In my arms...

Some time ago, I heard this song on the radio and I immediately claimed it as my own....for my kids. Each time I heard it, it made me want to hold them closer...tighter...longer. So I thought that I would share it with you, along with some recent pictures...my favorite being from Ellie's two month birthday. Enjoy!

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Dustbowls and firestorms....

Sheeh! What a weekend! For those of you who don't live here, we've been having some major Santa Ana winds and very, very low humidity. When we left Sunday morning for our little night away in San Diego, the visibility on the freeway by our house was a mere 100 yards or less with all the blowing dirt. It was insane....(Kelli...almost like those crazy dust storms in AZ!) The winds howled at our place all day and night Sunday I guess. Gloria was here taking care of Luke and she said at some points, she thought the windows would blow out! The winds made our would-be relaxing mini-getaway not so much fun too. :( Two fires had sparked up around the San Diego area while we were on our way down there yesterday, and by the time the wedding began at 4:45pm, even La Jolla was socked in with smoke and ash. The wedding was outdoors, as was the cocktail part of the reception, so we all smelled like we'd been at a bonfire more than a wedding by the time the night was through. The wedding was still beautiful, and our friends still had a wonderful celebration, which in the end, I guess is all that matters! Ellie was a complete angel and hardly made a peep the entire night! She got passed around to all of our friends for the first part of the night and then I wore her in my wrap for dinner and dessert. She is such a good baby! We are so blessed! But I worried for her little lungs breathing all that smokey air all night and her cute little cream outfit now is covered in little black specks of ash. :( The hotel we were staying at was a historic one and while very nice, it was so old that the windows didn't seal shut well at all. We got to enjoy that smoke ALL night long! :( Blegh! We also got to enjoy the loud music and sounds of the street below most of the early morning too. :( We got to bed late and slept fitfully (Ellie did pretty well sleeping....but Ty and I didn't) We awoke this morning to find that the two fires we went to sleep last night with had somehow grown to SIX and nearly all of San Diego county was in one way or another, affected by fire! When we learned that part of the I-15 was closed, we decided we had better leave earlier than we had originally planned, so as to leave ourselves extra time for a detour. Little did we know when we left at 10:30 this morning that our normally hour and 45 minute drive would take us a whopping FOUR AND A HALF hours! With the I-15 closed in one section, we took a detour through the canyon, which was supposed to let us out back on the 15 just above the closure. As luck would have it, minutes before we made it out of the canyon and onto the freeway, another fire had crossed over the freeway further north and closed THAT section of the 15 as well. We had to turn around and backtrack all the back to Oceanside, and then head north along the coast, until we could head inland for home! We stopped once so that I could feed Ellie, but the rest of the day was a crazy blur of heavy smoke, heavy traffic and too many hours behind the wheel. And once we finally made it home, we had a little boy who was not too happy with his mommy and daddy for leaving him overnight! :( He was quite angry with us for the first hour or so that we were home....he wouldn't even let us hug him at first. :( Poor baby! I feel horrible that he was so sad! According to Gloria though, he did great with her...it was just us he was being stinky with. Guess that's how it goes, eh? Boy am I glad today is over!

Needless to say, as I type this, I am feeling just a bit disillusioned and grumpy about what I had hoped to be a relaxing mini-getaway. It turned out to be more of a nightmare than anything. :( But at-least we're not dealing with all that the people of SD are...over a quarter of a million people there have been evacuated from there homes! It was insane down there......it literally looked like Dante's Inferno! Please keep those people in your prayers, as well as all the others around Southern California who are in harms way tonight with the many other fires that burn around us. Today has been eerily reminiscent of the those horrible 2003 fires. I just hope it doesn't get that bad out here again!

Well...my eyes are heavy as I type, so I think I'll sign off to what I hope will be a much better night's sleep.

Wednesday

Our Wednesdays are always long days, since Ty doesn't get home from work until late, and we chose to stay home most of the day (after a brief outing to My Gym). So.....to bring a little excitement to a normally ho-hum kind of afternoon (and blog), I decided to log our time in pictures for you. So here it goes....

When Luke woke up, we decided Ellie needed some tummy time (even though she wasn't to keen on that idea). This is our picture from the day before, but it was still part of our day on Wed. too! :)



After a short tummy session, it was time for a fall craft. I had some real fall colored leaves in a box of fall decorations, so we chose a few to make a tree collage with. Luke's favorite part was the glue, of-course.



And while he glued away, Ellie did this...(taking this picture at that angle was quite a feat, I might add!)



And Tess did this:


Isn't she so pathetic looking! Poor pup.

When Luke finished his little tree, I had to coerce him into posing with it for me...



...and then we headed to the playroom to kill some more time before dinner. Ellie was happier to be on her tummy this time around...



and even gave me a few funny faces...



Then she explored Squirt from Finding Nemo. She was SO interested in his big eyes.....she just stared and stared, throwing in an occasional smile for good measure!



With my camera pointed at Ellie, Luke decided he needed some attention too, so he brought me his pinwheel.



And finally, when Ellie was almost tuckered out, I caught this cute shot of her and Luke....



Don't you just love how Luke is laying there with his sis? Almost as if he's offering her moral support. Cute, cute. It was time to make dinner after that, so I put Ellie-Belle in her swing, threw on a video for Luke and headed into the kitchen for a bit. And when Ty got home at 6:45, dinner was on the table, ready for him. Am I a nice wifey, or what?! :) LOL!

And that, my friends, was our Wednesday. Today is another day at home. We took a LONG walk (over an hour) to another neighborhood this morning to feed the ducks, although they wanted nothing to do with the bread we brought them. :( And after our walk, I made several attempts to get some 2-month pictures of Ellie. For the first time ever, she was in a real funk and cried nearly the whole time. :( Bummer. I had to stop several times to calm her down, but eventaully I snagged some good shots of her. I'll share those in a day or two! They are SUPER cute, so stayed tuned. :) The rest of the afternoon will most likely be spent cleaning house and doing chores. Fun, fun. But....there is lots to look forward to in our weekend, so I can't complain too much! :) I'm off for now to tackle that to-do list! Ta-ta! :)

Eight???

Maybe the number of the day today is EIGHT, because that's how many hours Ellie slept last night! :) Technically, according to Babywise, eight hours is considered sleeping through the night! Now, I'm not going to move ahead and say she is officially sleeping through the night just yet....I need to see a few more repeats of last night first, but I think we're close! She wasn't in her bed all those eight hours either, so that's another thing that keeps me from being too excited (although I am pretty darn happy!). She had fallen asleep in her swing after I fed her at 6:15 and she snoozed through our dinner and Luke's bath. She never really woke again. I tried to feed her before officially putting her to bed around 8:15, but she was too drowsy to take more than a sip or two. So off to bed it was, and I didn't hear from her again until 3am. Ironically, I woke up around 1:40, knowing that I hadn't heard from her in awhile and went to check on her...just to be sure she was still breathing.....she did have all those shots yesterday ya know, and was out of sort all day yesterday, so I was a little worried. She was fine...sleeping like a log. When she stirred at 3, she ate just on one side and then it was off to sleep again and then her wake time wasn't until 6:50 this morning. Amazing. I actually got a FULL night's sleep last night and feel so well rested this morning. Loving that!! Ty had to be up at his normal Wednesday time of 3:45 (isn't that horrible!!!) , so we were in bed by 9:15....meaning that I was technically in bed (and asleep most of that time) for almost 10 hours! How awesome is that! I certainly needed the sleep...I think I've been trying to fight off a tiny cold. But this morning, I am refreshed and energized.....and hopeful of another good night of sleep tonight! :)