Stir Crazy

Our house has been busy.  I mean very busy and I think the new baby is the cause.  You know when you get stuck in a house so long that you decide to rearrange the furniture?  We reached that point.  This new baby Callie has kept us in our house so much that we have gone a little stir crazy.  When you spend 30 minutes every 3 hours sitting on the couch feeding a baby and staring at the bookshelves in the family room, you start to think how much better they would look in the bedroom.  Then you think that the couches and bookshelves would be better over here.  And then you think “what if we were to paint the kitchen this color”.  All of that happened this past month.  Now our living room has 6 accent colors painted on the wall (paint samples on the wall for the kitchen) and our house finally has some color in it.  When the bank sold us the house they decided to paint the whole house cream, ceilings and all.  As I was painting the kitchen this weekend I started talking to Kenzie about valences and what I saw on Pintrest and realized that I have truly lost my manhood when I can speak woman so fluently.

Callie is growing like a weed.  There was a terrible week this month where she started throwing up like crazy, but luckily Kenzie felt inspired to take her poo in to the doctor on the first day of the throwing up and the doctor tested the poo and found out that the kid has a milk intolerance.  Talk about a spiritual giant right?  Kenzie gets her spiritual promptings about poo.  So we were able to get a second mortgage on our house and buy the 30 bucks a can formula which is milk free or whatever.  The first few days were pretty rough and there wasn’t much sleeping in our house.  In fact, Callie was kind of like a gremlin and anytime you got liquid near her she would shriek and bad things would happen.  Now baby and mom and dad are doing well and adjusted to the new formula.

 Kenna is taking to the big sister thing like a fish in water.  She is constantly helping with diapers and is always there to help cheer up Callie or but her binkie in.  We are also super lucky to have Lixie and Jenna around (disclaimer – we also love Bo) because Lixie constantly takes her on park excursions and Jenna always clears her schedule when Kenna wants to play.  We love living near the other Winns.  Kenna has also been tearing it up in ballet and I think she is able to do decent impressions of first and second position.  She is always blown away when dad can also do those positions and other assorted canned dances (thank you Cab Calloway performing arts middle school).  She has also been loving her pre-school day every week and thinks going to school with her friends is awesome.

As for Kenzie and me, we are still married.  Kenzie has started to exercise again, but has been thwarted with illness and infection.  She is a trooper though and is handling being a mom of two very well.  She loves her girls that is for sure.  Work has been keeping me busy and challenging me in new ways.  I don’t have much time to be bored and when I get home I am usually out with Kenna, running, or doing some random task around the house.  Texas weather is in that perfect stage of 70-80 degree temperatures right now, which almost makes up for the awful summer.  We spend lots of time outside and at the park with Kenna riding her scooter and me carrying the old bread for the ducks.  Sometimes, I will randomly call my mom and explain how much work it is having two children and she will patiently humor me and listen.  The older I get, the more respect I have for my parents, in-laws, and grandparents for all the work they did to raise large families and emerge with a small piece of sanity intact at the end of it.  Small piece.

 

 Minnie Mouse at her preschool party.  She got a stamp which she completely used up in one day and got to hit a pinata.  She was less than ferocious.

 

Don't look at me!

 

2 Months

Little Callie is two months old today.  She had her check-up yesterday and the doctor said if she hadn't known better she'd never have guessed Callie was preterm.  She is doing great.  She is very strong and although she hates tummy time she is able to lift her head.  When you hold her against your chest she tries very hard to lift her head and look at you.  I think she has started smiling in the last couple of days, but its not quite all the way there yet.  She is a great baby and doesn't cry much and she sleeps two longish stretches at night.  She is as sweet as can be and we are very glad to have her.  Kenna is especially glad and loves being a big sister.  She is constantly helping and cuddling.  She likes to hold Callie and if she crying will rush to put her binky in.  She is great at throwing diapers away and running to grab things for us.  We love her too.

Callie's Stats -
Weight: 8.91 lb (5th percentile)
Length: 21.25 in (8th percentile)
Head Circumference 14.5 in (15th percentile)

Most of a smile, but maybe gas

Other than that life is just rolling along.  My mom and dad came to visit last week and Kenna was thrilled.  She spent the whole week leading up to their visit asking when they were coming.  She tells me every day that she misses them and today she was telling me (while giggling) about how grandpa jokes her. 

Nate took off work and we visited the pumpkin patch with them.  It is not as cool as the one we visited last year, but it was significantly closer and Kenna was thrilled with it.  She got to ride a pony (if you ask her about it she will tell you about how the purple one was slow - meaning the horse with the purple blanket didn't want to move), brush a pony, touch an assortment of farm animals, play in the bounce house, run the hay maze and most importantly - pick out a pumpkin which she did very carefully.  She wanted to be able to pick it up so she walked around trying to pick them all up and telling us "this one is too heavy."  We finally convinced her that she didn't have to carry it and we found one to bring home.

 

 

 Grandpa also enjoyed the bounce house

 

 We got to carve the pumpkins and Kenna decided to decorate if further by coloring it as well.  It has whiskers.  We had a great visit!

Right now our life is just day to day busyness.  I feel like I do nothing all day and yet the days pass quickly and I am busy during all of them.  I guess its the constant feeding and changing of one baby and potty trips/meals and playing doll house with the other.  Kenna is still loving ballet and preschool but I really haven't gotten her to tell me much about what she is learning in either.  Oh well.  I'm really enjoying life and it is fun to have such sweet girls.  I love our little family and life is good.

Now for the ways Kenna has kept us entertained this month -

She has picked up a new phrase.  We're not sure what it means or where she learned it but it is hilarious to hear her say it - "in-hydle-doe"

Also for those who've read previous posts Kenna told me - "Sometimes in bed I lift my feet up and go cha kah cha kah cha kah!"

Kenna has also started to tell us about her dreams which are interesting.  One morning she asked Nate if the bear and tiger were real and another morning she told me she dreamed she had to go potty - uh-oh!

Finally, Kenna loves to look at the mail, especially junk mail.  One day she was sorting through adds and narrating along these lines, "Look it says if you wanna get new tires. I'll leave it by you so we can get new tires. This one says if you wanna get new cowboots.  I'll leave it by daddy so he can get new cowboots.  This one says if you wanna come to a new kangaroo show.  Its for me."

Shift Change

Our life is in three hour increments at this point. 

Here is the for instance.  Kenzie went to work last Saturday for a half-day shift.  I always man up (although it should be mom up) and decide to let Kenzie have a full night of sleep before she trudges off to work.  I do this because I know how much harder it is to go to work than to stay home and be a mom.  If you cannot sense the sarcasm, it was pretty thick with that last statement.  Kenzie went to bed early and I manned the babies from 6pm until noon the next day.  I am used to taking the early morning feeding or the twilight feeding (go team Jacob), but I am not so used to taking a whole evening and then being expected to function as a parent the next day.  I mean, the baby needs to be changed, you have to warm up the bottle, feed the kid, burp the kid in between, change the kids clothes because she spits up on them, swaddle the baby, put her in her crib, put the binkie in, return to the crib because the baby spit the binkie out, feed the other kid when she wakes up, etc etc etc.  And I had the whole pumping/breastfeeding thing removed from the equation.  When Kenzie got home and asked how the night was, my response was "terrible, she was up every three hours!".

Kenzie is handling all of this like a champ.  She is sleep deprived and a zombie some days, but I can't blame her at all.  Kenna is also adjusting to having a sibling very well.  She insists on giving Callie hugs and kisses before she goes to bed and always makes sure that we include Callie when we hang out, read stories, or read scriptures.  She has handled all of this adjustment way better than I thought she would.  Lixie constantly takes her on park excursions and other adventures with Jenna and Bo, which is a huge help.

My life has been pretty busy.  Work is a lot busier since my role shifted to a lead on my team.  I used to have a lot of down time at work which allowed me to surf the internet or do other things at work, but I don't have any time for that anymore.  It is sad.  It is good to be busy though and I think it makes the time fly by much faster.  My time at home cruises by with either a jog with Kenna in the stroller, a trip to feed Sargent Quakerson (the local duck), running errands, or something else.  Usually in the evening I get an hour or two with Kenzie before the shift change.

We are glad that Callie is home and we are all happy.