No sleep till...

So all that talk of having a wonderful happy baby may have given me the jinx.
Oh, he's still wonderful and happy mostly all the time, but he's totally not falling into any long restful sleep pattern.
I've been successful in working some sort of night time routine.
Bath and a Meal with Bed time following around 8 or 9 every night.  Sometimes we are off by a half an hour or so, but that's fine.  The first sleep stint usually last around 3 or 4 hours, then it's every two hours.  Sometimes less and sometimes he doesn't want to go right back down, so I end up sleep-rocking him.  (By that, I mean I usually fall asleep sitting up while rocking him)
What gives?
He's a chunker so while Boo seems to be the nickname that rolls of the tongue the most, we also like to call him 'The Meat'.
Naturally, The Meat needs to keep up appearances so each of these wake periods he eats...a lot.  I haven't caved with bringing him into my bed and I'm not going to. I know this would give me a few more hours, but I also learned from past experiences that once done, this is hard to undo.
How long could this possible last?
We started giving him cereal and it makes absolutely no difference.
I mean, he scarfs it down, but he's still wakes up wanting to eat at the same time.  I believe I may have created a human garbage disposal.  I'm not even sure if the 'cry it out' method would even work in this situation.  I would probably only succeed in waking the rest of the house.
For now, I guess I'll just see where we end up.  He's almost 5 months, so I think we are still with in the average as far as sleep.

Another little treat The Meat has been testing out is the capacity and limits of his lungs and vocals.  He can make such a high pitched sound that it almost silences out for a few seconds in each yell interval.  He loves it.  It cracks him up. He's totally discovered that voice and must know how far he can take it.
Maybe I'll have a rock star.  :)

Just to keep current with brotherly love...
Ryder has been so unbelievable.  I had hoped that they would like each other, but all my expectations have been exceeded.  Ryder talks to the baby all the time and the baby actually pays attention.  He'll say, "Hi, Boo!" and the baby's eyes will light up.  They smile at each other and get each other cracking up.  When big brother walks around the room, Tyce will follow him around with his eyes.
And sometimes Ryder can calm him down when no one else can.  It's fantastic.
I just love watching them interact with each other, it melts my heart.  (and I can manage to squeeze in a few chores)

I'm amazed every day.

I just love those two boys.

Sea World Surprise

Our oldest son graduated preschool last Tuesday.   What a wonderful experience to see how much he has grown.  He has accomplished so much over this last year. It went by so fast, I feel like he's become a big kid overnight.
On our way to the ceremony our neighbor, Mr. Bill (who I've mentioned in another story here), stopped by to congratulate him.   The exchange of words almost broke my heart it was so sweet.  After some 'wows', 'thank yous' and 'my how big you've gotten', Ryder looks up and says, "And my mom is so proud of me."  I melted.  You can imagine the emotions that ran through me knowing he knows how I feel.  It was a moment all parents relish in.
The graduation production was great.   He received a medal for his knowledge of dinosaurs, "most likely to become a paleontologist."   So smart.  I really have an amazing boy.  A special feature was the whole group singing songs that they had been practicing as a surprise for the parents.  Also, very sweet.
Afterwards the 4 of us, Aunt Cindy, Devin and MomMom went to a celebratory dinner.  Ryder got a some graduation gifts.  One of which was a surprise to both he and I...
A trip to Sea World!!!
Yes!
We visited the park last November while I was pregnant and it was amazing.  Ever since we have been talking about going back.  We think it's a great place to take a baby, because there are so many shows.  Between that and the many aquariums we would be able enjoy it together instead of waiting or taking turns while the other takes Ryder on the  attractions.  Not to mention, Ryder's knowledge of sea creatures is fantastic.  He knows the names of fish I have never heard of.  He's quite enthusiastic to learn more, so, of course, we want to encourage it.

If you live in Florida I would recommend getting the Fun Card.  Basically you pay for a day and can come back all year.  We got one of these and one year pass.  The year pass is about $30 more but you get free parking and 10% of food and merchandise.   If you only use them twice it's worth it.  They offered a free year pass for preschoolers in the beginning of the year, which I had printed up just in case something like this came up.  Bonus.
The Hubs had set it up so we were staying in a hotel Thursday and Friday night,with plans to go to the park on Friday.  We ended up getting to our room around 1 on Thursday.  Since we had the passes we decided to do a dry run to the park.  The hotel offered a shuttle so I wanted to be sure with the bags, the stroller and all the other goodies that come with a baby that we were prepared.  The ride was smooth and so was our entrance to the park.
We hit the Dolphin Show first.  These animals are so magnificent.  I get goose bumps and teary eyed every time I see this show.  It is incredible.  You can't help but smile.

I was up top for this one.  They have a special area for sleeping babies if you don't want to wake them up and take them out of the stroller.  Extra Bonus.
The highlight of the trip for me was feeding these spectacular mammals.  I feel like you can see how smart they are by just looking at their eyes.  They are so fast, yet so graceful in the water.  I just love them.

$7 extra per person.  So totally worth it, we did it again the next day! 


The highlight for the Hubs was feeding the sting rays.  They are in a tank were you can pet them and they come up to the side if you have food or not.  But, after feeding the dolphins the interaction was too hard for the boys to resist.

Ryder had a lot of favorites.  On his list along with feeding the dolphins and sting rays was Shamu's Happy Harbor.  They have a huge rope/slide/play/obstacle/climbing area that is probably 3 stories high.  Like a pumped up fast food playground, all kids love it.  Add a splash zone, carousel, mini roller coaster, and several other kid friendly rides and what child could resist.

 He also loved Turtle Trek, which is a new attraction.  You follow the journey of life with a sea turtle in a 3-D dome.  It was very entertaining for all of us, even the baby.  Although he did not wear the glasses, he was so alert, really taking in all the images and sounds.  On the way out there is an interactive video game and a view of the live turtles and manatees you saw while waiting for the show underneath.  More reasons to love it.
 
Besides offering a shuttle, another awesome perk of our hotel was that was got a quick queue card with out stay.  The quick queue is Sea World's version of the fast past that is offered at Disney.  Although, in my opinion,  Sea World's is better because you get one card to use for the whole day on all rides applicable at any time.   I'm so glad we decided to get them even though we weren't sure if we would use them.  After walking under Manta a couple of times, the Hubs wanted to check it out.  The baby was sleeping and Ryder was entertained with a stuffed sting ray he won so it was perfect timing.  He headed up the quick queue line and discovered that they also have a single rider line.  Which basically means no line.  He came out so fast, ranting and raving about how awesome it was.  Obviously, I headed right in.  Another girl was walking up with me and I guess the guy thought we were together so we got to ride in the same row.  Whether you are two or more you should always check out this line, you may get to ride together anyway. I feel like this is a huge secret that no one knows about.  The Manta is such a system overload that you aren't talking or even looking at the person next to you anyway.  No line. What an amazing discovery, right?!
Although, I'm not sure I can really give a more accurate review of the actual ride.  System overload is my best description.  When you get in you are sitting like a normal roller coaster.  By the time you realize your legs are pinned, the floor drops out and the whole coaster is tilting until you are laying face down at the ground.
Laying.
Face down.
Staring at the ground.
Totally freaking out on the inside, trying to look cool on the outside.  Once that baby starts down the first drop, Boom, system overload.  The G-forces are indescribable.  You can't help but scream/yell.  It's a mixture of excitement and fear so intense that I hope I can bring myself to ride it again.

So as you can see the trip was a huge success!
What a great surprise for all of us.
And this is a short list of all there is to do.  
Oh, and if you are curious what Tyce did most of the time....

But he was sure to flash his happy baby smiles at everyone and anyone who would accept them.  He was quite the entertainer in the few lines we did have to wait in.  I wish I could capture more of them on video, but lately every time I aim the camera at him I get a look like this...

But don't worry, I'll keep trying.  The Meat is hilarious when he really gets his arms and legs pumping while giving belly laughs.

So, Congrats again to our Grad!  We love you so much and couldn't be more proud!  You definitely earned your trip to Sea World and the many more to come!

Update:  I have not seen the movie Blackfish and these trips to SeaWorld were well before it came out.  But I am an animal lover and felt obligated to comment.  I don't plan on watching because I know it will be horrible.  And for the record we have not been back to the park or renewed our passes. Just hearing about it was impact enough for us.  The reason I loved SeaWorld was because I felt like it was such a huge educational experience for the kids.  The shows are great, but Ryder got much more out of the aquariums.  He loved walking though ALL of them and reading up on the creatures.  He loves anything to do with the ocean and is constantly giving us fun facts about different marine life.  They did a wonderful job with constantly talking about recycling and educating families on the effects that litter has on our oceans.  Did you know that sea turtles eat jellyfish?  A discarded plastic grocery back looks just like a jellyfish when floating in the ocean.  It kills the already endangered innocent turtle looking for a meal.  All improperly disposed trash eventually makes it to the ocean, even if you live in Kansas.  We learned that and other great information watching the 3-D movie Turtle Trek.  They also have a manatee rehabilitation center.  This is huge in Florida because manatees are such slow moving creatures that they often get hit by boats.  There are many of these centers scattered throughout our state.  Many people would never know that because they don't visit our local Wildlife refugee park, they go to SeaWorld.  I always felt that even if a fraction of the people at the park on any given day absorbed one of the positive conservation messages or started recycling when they went home that was HUGE.  Getting such an important message to such a large scale of people should not have to be at the expense of such magnificent creatures. 

Happy Campers @The Orange Blossom Jamboree

Our family loves Music Festivals.
Camping in itself is fun, add great music, good people and good vibes....what more could you ask for?
4 years ago the dynamic of our Music Festivals changed when we brought our first son to the Wanee at 9 months.  This past year was the first year we missed that particular festival.  Although we were kinda bummed, it was a good decision.  However fantastically awesome, it was getting too big.  Maybe when the kids are bigger we can revisit the idea of going again, but for now we have found many smaller family friendly festivals to replace it. 

The Orange Blossom Jamboree has become of our favorite.  It's only 3 years old, so it's still on the smaller side, which is perfect for the kids.  The Sertoma Youth Ranch, where it is held, is a beautiful campground, with lots of shade and hot showers.  There is a creek running through the camp area which is awesome and provides hours of entertainment for the youngsters.   Not to mention the terrific bands that play all weekend long.
It was the baby's 1st festival so we were curious to see how the weekend was gonna go.

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words....

Here he is with my friend Carey.  This is pretty much what he looked like all weekend.

This is my favorite photo of the weekend.  Daddy and son headed to the music, which was at the stage in the background.  Also bunches of vendors with food, art and everything in between.

A local artist named Bean Spence kindly decorated the end of the creek with his fun artwork.  He also holds an art class for the kids during all festivals he attends.  Great guy.  Ryder really enjoys him.

This was probably the highlight of the trip.  The infamous rope swing.  Once we set up this bad boy our campsite became the hot spot for the kids.  Which, of course, Ryder loved.  He made lots of friends.

Our neighbors had a birthday party for their son who turned 8.  All the kids were invited, which was great.

Archy the 46 yr old parrot.  Super smart.  He made a lot of friends through out the weekend, too.

Here's the baby meeting Amanda and Lexy for the first time.  She was just so excited to hold him.

On the last night we wanted to see the music, so we brought the baby in the stroller.  We didn't get the smiles, but the next best thing...a sleeping boy.   He was just perfect.

A fire show at night.  Always entertaining.

The Applebutter Express is one of our favorite bands.  We first met them at our campsite at the Wanee 3 years ago when they were just a duo traveling from campfire to campfire.  With his ukelele playing and her amazing voice you knew their talent would get noticed.  They have since added some band members and are playing huge venues, like Bonnaroo!  Congrats guys, you deserve it!

Here's a few links to check out OBJ, The Applebutter Express, some of Bean's artwork and the campground, which is open all year and hosts many music fests throughout the year.

http://www.orangeblossomjamboree.com/bands/applebutter-express

http://beanspenceart.com/index.php/gallery/

http://sertomayouthranch.org/Home.html

I hope you enjoy them all and we hope to see you at OBJ next year!

Happy Mother's Day

My 1st Mother's Day gifts from a preschooler.
So sweet!

Check it out, it's in their own words.

A trip to the Aquarium for the family.

A penguin show (one of Ryder's favorite animals),

There were many amazing things to see.  Along with Sea Dragons, Sting Rays, Sea horses, Otters, some of the highlights were...

A grouper bigger than a 4 year old,

A spider crab bigger than a baby,

and a great show in the Predator Tank.

To end the evening..... 

A wonderful dinner of baby crab butt at Carrabba's.

Delicious!

Who could ask for more?

I love all my boys!

Thank You for a wonderful, wonderful day.

Etsy

I have no idea how I have never stumbled upon this website before.   
I was in the dark.   

 Now,
I love Etsy!

It's like walking through a quaint downtown artsy district loaded with tons of shops, each with it's own unique and handmade items.  Plus, there are lots of great deals. 

Here are a few fun items I've gotten recently....maybe you need some gift ideas for your friends and family.  I know I have a whole list of favorites saved up.  Amazon step aside, I have a new on-line place for gift shopping.

Merelani Designs 

has several colors of these rose studs along with many other earrings.  I got these and a dangling pair for under $8, shipping and all.

Fairievalley 

has a bunch of covers for your ereader.  I am very excited about this purchase.  My hubby got me a Kindle touch for my birthday and I want to keep it protected from all the commotion that goes on in my house.  This little peace sleeve is  custom made just for me.  $8, what a great deal.

Crazy4Handstamping

has these cute little sterling silver charms for $5.50.

My mom got me something similar when my first son was born and I lost it over the years.   I've been wanting to replace it since the day I discovered it was missing.  When I came across these, I jumped on the opportunity to customize two of them..one for each son!  They are looking great on my bangle bracelet.

And the shop owner was very pleasant and easy to work with.  (since I had never ordered anything from Etsy before, I was kind of a pain)

 

GracensDesigns 

currently has my favorite purchase.

They have several variations of this pea in the pod necklace.  Mine has four light green 'peas', one to represent each member in my family.  Super cute, personal and sentimental!

I love it so much, I decided to get one for my mom, my hubby's mom and my sister-in-law as a Mother's Day gift.  Each is different and unique with it's own personalization, which, to me, makes it that much more special!

If you have already discovered the joy that is Etsy you are probably rolling your eyes, thinking 'Duh'.  But if you haven't and you like shopping for unique handmade gifts, you'll love it.

Just an update:
I wrote this about one month ago, but had not posted, because of the gift items.
I have since gifted my family, but in the meantime I bought something else.  This time for the dog.  I know, I know they have it all.

HawaiiHandMadeGifts

has these super reflective collars for dogs.  Since MountieBoo has been escaping on a daily basis, this was a necessity.  It's perfect against his dark coat and comes in extremely handy at night.  The shop owner, Nancy, was amazing.  Her communication was fantastic and she got the collar to me in under 4 days...all the way from Hawaii. 

So if you are in need of a reflective dog collar check her shop out!

Happy Shopping!  :)

Welcome to The Club....

My childhood  next door neighbor/friend and his wife just had their first baby boy.
He is adorably huge and perfectly perfect.   
They are now home and my mom stopped over for a visit.
She said they are great and tired.
I wanted to call them and start spewing all my best advice..but instead I decided to write about it.

Since I'm on baby #2 I feel like a pro.  Of course, this is not the case, but I do feel like it is a bit easier the second time around.
Maybe easier isn't the word....but I'm not as nervous or neurotic.  Still a control freak, but I know I'm not gonna snap off the baby's finger while trying to get the onesie on
and when the binky falls on the floor I know I don't have to run it through an hour long sanitizing cycle.

When you enter the world of parenthood it's like joining a club.  You're automatically inducted into it.  Whether you like it or not, the choice is not yours to make.  Every mother wants to tell the new mother what she did with her baby and how her ideas are  the one and only way of doing things.  Consider this your initiation into The Club.  You can't escape it.

Since I've already been through initiation into The Club, I feel it's perfectly acceptable for me to take my turn doing the 'hazing'.  I want to share my knowledge with my friends.
So here it is....
Or here's what I thought when I got home with my first son and what I've learned so far...
(on the subject of sleep anyway)
(and for the record, I, by no means, know it all.  I'm learning something new all the time, even as I type.)

If you're like me, when you got home, you are kinda freaking out.  I thought,
"Oh man, I can't believe they just sent me home with this baby without any instructions.  What do I do now?!"
All you really want to do is sleep.  But, that's not gonna happen.  Not unless you are one of the small percent whose babies sleep through the night right away.  And if you're not one of those you don't wanna hear about it.  You're too delirious from no sleep, like the rest of us. 

So try and hold your eyes open while you read this.  :)

Baby #1 went to the crib for the first 2 months.  I got up every 2-3 hours to feed and rock him.  Feed and Rock.  Exhausting.  He was a fussy baby and I felt like nothing was right.  At 3 months, I had to go back to work.  I was a manager at a restaurant so there were late nights.  The Hubs was on duty until I got home.  Bless him because he had to get up early for work.   I was used to sleeping in (way in) but the baby was having none of that.   So after a while of fighting it, I caved and brought him into our bed.  This allowed for several more hours of sleep.  Awesome.  Awesome, until he never wanted to sleep in his bed again.
This is a battle that is still going on today.  He goes in phases of sleeping in his own room, but he does  still creep in our bed.  I'm constantly trying to think of cool, persuading ideas for him to stay in his bed.  They will work for a while, but  haven't held for the long term.
Lesson learned.
With the new baby I'm holding strong with the crib.
But..
that's not how we started out.
For the first 2 months of his life, he slept on me, on the couch.  Sometimes next to the couch in the pack n' play, but mostly on me.  For whatever reason, I needed him near me and we both slept longer like that.   I knew I couldn't do that for long, he was getting bigger fast and the comfort level was declining.   This go around, I'm a stay at home mom, so I can be consistent.  I started bringing him into his room at the same time every night.  With only a night light, I would rock and feed him, then put him in the crib.   Sometimes he would go down and sometimes not.  I would try and let him cry for at least 5 minutes, then repeat.  After several nights, he started to catch on.  He's still in the crib and we are making progress with longer stints of sleep.  The most has been 5 hours,  never two 5 hour intervals back to back...that would be glorious.   But I'm thankful for what I can get.   We're still working on when and what is a day nap time.  For now, he just racks out whenever and I go with it.  (like now)

I read lots of books and articles on line and I think one thing always holds true.
You and your baby are originals.  There are no two like you.  Learn what works best for your family and roll with that.
One baby will love the swing, one will hate it.  One baby will occupy himself on a play mat on the floor, one will scream bloody murder when you put him down for a split second.
A good thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot of phases that the baby (and toddler and young boy)  will go through, but they don't last forever.  So when your baby is screaming in your face and you have no idea why, try to remember that he's not going to do it forever.  It will be hard, but know that it's true. 
On a happier note...
You've grown a person in your body.  Congratulations! It's a miracle!  There will be no other feeling in the world like the feeling when you and your baby are looking into each others eyes and he smiles at you for the first time.  Truly smiles.  It's incredible.  The best feeling and depending on how tired you are, you may cry from joy.

As things come up, utilize The Club.
Call your mommy/parent friends...
they may not have an answer, but
they will have a story to share that you may be able to relate to,
that will make you feel like you are not alone,
at least for a minute.

That's what I do and it still gives me comfort.

So, other members of The Club, please feel free to leave your comments.
Sharing is caring and we can learn a thing or two from each other.  :)

Just an update....

The Blueberry Festival was this past weekend.
We went everyday!
Like I mentioned before there isn't usually to much happening in our small town, so we really made the best of it.


Friday night there was a parade and then some music and food trucks downtown. 

The infamous Taco Bus. 

People talk about the Taco Bus ALL THE TIME.  We figured we would wait until Saturday to get some.
This was a dumb idea.
No Taco Bus on Saturday.  Duh, it was Cinco de Mayo, why would the Taco Bus be at the Blueberry Festival??  Lesson learned: See Taco Bus, Get food from Taco Bus.


Saturday the festivities started at 10 am.  We met up with some friends and went to check out some of the fun.

This picture of the kids makes me wanna sing, "Hey, Hey we're the Monkeys.."

It was great!  They had about 10 square blocks barricaded off.  The streets were filled with plenty of carnival food and lots of vendors.  There was a kids area with face painting and some other usual suspects.  They had small stages set up every where, just about every block you turned on there was music.  Also very cool,  they had an open container policy for the weekend, which meant we could have a cold beer while we walked around.   We catered to the children, so we spent a lot of time sitting in the shade listening to whatever music drifted our way, while the kids ran around in the grass.  All and all a great time.

Sunday the Hubs and I went back with our family.  As it turned out our 4 year old wanted to stay and play at his cousin's for a bit.  They have a property right off Main St. so we left him behind and headed up with just the stroller.  The baby was a dream and slept the whole time.  We were able to really enjoy ourselves and check out everything without interruption.  We got to watch the street performers, eat blueberry shortcake and even make a few purchases.

My favorite purchase would have to be the honey!

That's right!  Blueberry Honey!
So delicious and super good for you, especially when it's local. This one came from a couple towns over.
Yay!  



It was a great weekend for us and a great weekend for the town.







The baby was an angel.  He did great.  He's mostly a happy baby, but ya never know how they are gonna act when taken out of their element.   But this is what we got to deal with...

...and when he wasn't smiling, he was eating or sleeping.  Perfect!
And not to leave out his older brother, we got several compliments on how good his manners were and how sweet he was.  Makes you feel good that all your hard work pays off.  Especially when they choose to preform well in public, because Lord knows they are not always on their best behavior at home. 

This makes me even more excited for our upcoming camping trip.  It will be the baby's 1st music festival!  Our older son started going when he was 9 months old and he loves them. I'm really pumped that they can share the experience.  Even at such a young age the baby really identifies with his big brother.  He smiles every time he sees him.  And the feeling is totally mutual.  Big brother loves to talk to him and get him laughing.  It's so special to see.


On a side note:
I finally caved and got a new phone.  It's smart.  ;)  And it has a cool camera, which all these pictures were taken with.   It's pretty amazing what technology can do...I didn't even have to plug my phone into anything to upload the pictures.  Just accessed everything through the web.  Wild.  Who would have thought we would have come so far so fast?  Instead of telling our kids, "I walked up hill, both ways, in the snow."  We'll say, "All the phones had wires, hooked into the wall and some even required quarters to make a call."