September, October, November

What a crazy life...though I think I'm slowly adjusting to it.

It is almost Thanksgiving and I am left thinking "WHERE did this semester go?".  It's amazing.
Tuesday through Friday are typically a blur.  I wake up inbetween 5:45 and 6, get ready, wake the kids, change diapers, and away we go.  I leave Chrisman by 7:15 and am at school a little before 8.  After school on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a few minutes to breathe and collect my thoughts before Joy shows up with the kids and 3:40 and we go to Eastern for Speech.  On Wednesdays and Fridays as soon as the bell rings at 3:20 I dash out to the car and help Joy change the kids over and hope to beat the "rush" of kids and parents out of the parking lot so I don't wait in line to get out for 5 minutes.  We make it to Sarah Bush by 3:55 and hurry up to the 4th floor to the Speech and Hearing Department for our Speech visit from 4-5.  We get home around 6 and I try to feed everyone by 6:30/6:45.  Then Ben gets his bath as Samee is finishing eating (she is SO pokey).  By the time Ben is out Samee is completely done eating and it then becomes her turn. I fill up the bath for Samee, get her in and then put Ben in the swing for his 7:15ish bottle and nap.  Then I get to play with Samee while she is in the bath tub.  Sometimes I read and man is that amazing.  Samee plays for awhile and by 8 she is out and dressed for bed.  She then either watches a movie on her t.v. in the play area or goes back to JM and my bed to watch Umi Zoomi.  For the next half hour I try to accomplish some household chore.  Not tonight though, I'm working on the computer....and blogging.  At 8:30 I collect her and bribe her to bed with the lure of a book or two.  We lay in her bed and cuddle and read a few books.  Then it is lights out.  Sometimes she falls asleep during the book but other time she asks me to hum to her.  I always hum Amazing Grace.  When she nods off, I slide out of her bed.  A this point it is close to 9.  I then go and take my shower.  After I get MY pj's on I go back to the living room and remove Baby Ben from the swing and put him into his bed.  o Baby Ben!  He started sleeping in his bed (in his room) the week of Halloween.  By this time it is 9:30ish and I attempt a few more house chores... laundry, dish washer, toy pick-up/straighten, etc.  At some point I give up and decompress with some t.v. or a book.  By this point it is 10 and I always debate whether to stay up or go take a nap.  Ben get's up at 11 for a quick "snack" and then goes back to sleep.  He is an excellent sleeper.  He wakes up drink his bottle and goes right back to sleep.  Sometimes I don't think he even opens his eyes.  After he goes back down at 11 he gets up around 2:30-3 and then 5:45ish.  

I haven't pumped or nursed during the day or evening for 2 weeks.  With Samee I felt like a dairy cow but with Ben I was barely getting by at all once I started school.  I gave up when I was consistently only pumping  2 ounces over a 30 minute period at lunch. I even took Fenegreek, a vitamin supplement to help milk production and I drank water like it was going out of supply.  Nothing helped.  Now I only nurse at night.  Sometimes twice but usually only once.

Ben is growing, growing, growing.  He's been putting on about 3 pounds a month.  As of last Tuesday the 6th, he weighted 21 pounds and was 29 inches long.  He was only 5 months and 1 week, I believe.  He only wore 9 month clothes for maybe 2 weeks.  All of his pajamas and once-piece outfits are 12 month, though some two piece outfits are 9 month.

Samee continues to excel in her speech therapy lessons.  I can easily hear commonly used phrases. Her newest one is "let go of me".  Typically used in the middle of a store when she has been let out of the cart but can't quite handle the responsibility and I am picking her up to put BACK into the cart.

"go away", which came from an iPad app called Go Away big Green Monster.  It quickly morphed to Move out of the way or Move away.  Depends on how you interpret the jumble.  This is used when she wants to help in the kitchen and you are standing where she wants to put HER chair.

I help.  Once again a kitchen term typically but not exculsively.

Make Bread.  Joy makes cinnamon roles on Wednesday and bakes them Thursday morning to take up town to a diner.  The diner sells them and gives Joy a portion of the profit.  Samee LOVES to help in the kitchen.  Just this morning she was telling me how to make bread when I dropped her off.  I don't know if they made bread today or not, but if they didn't Joy was a master at convincing her otherwise.

I hide.  She LOVES hide and seek and will sucker almost anyone into playing it.

She has a lot of other words and phrases but a few too many to think of right here on the spot.

Ben is slobbering like a facet runs water.  Somewhere there are teeth in there, I'm sure of it.  I haven't seen any signs but surely there will be one soon.  He is eating baby food now and has been for about a week.  He likes sweet potatoes and squash but LOVES peas.  He enjoys almost any fruit, but didn't seem to enjoy prunes QUITE as much as the others.  We joked a few months ago that if he kept growing like he was he would be eating mashed potatoes and gravy by Thanksgiving.  What was a joke, will soon be a reality.
He is SO long and so SOLID.  Of course, he does have the obligatory baby rolls that are SO cute.

My 2 year old discovered that I was sitting at the computer.  She is telling me " I need help".  =)