My OH My

Life has been too busy for words these past few weeks. Our girls are keeping our hands full.

Ava has entered what we believe are the ‘trying threes’ at 31 months old. She is misbehaving like crazy and trying my last nerves. She wants to as much as she can by herself and I am trying to work with that but while trying to make sure she stays safe while doing it. Since moving upstairs, she is now going up and down the stairs a lot. A lot by herself. I will be in the kitchen and she will yell “Mommy” from upstairs, with her short legs and being a typical 2 year old I am afraid she will be falling backwards if she doesn’t pay attention. So I go to the bottom of the stairs and watch her come down. She does really well but I think it’s just the mom in me scared that I’ll find her at the bottom with something broke. I say ‘no’ she says ‘yes OR my daddy says yes OR Vickie says yes OR Hailey says yes’, she tries anything to get to do what she wants when she wants even though she has been told no.

There has been a lot of time outs. On top of all this our 7 month old is teething and cranky and clingy. So there are a lot of times we have both of them crying and sometimes we have no clue why either is doing it. Hailey, granted, can’t tell us what is wrong; we have to figure it out. But Ava will be doing something, happy, then we will make a move, and its WRONG according to her and she just starts crying and throwing a fit. This most of the time upsets Hailey, who hates to hear her cry. So she ends up trying to tell us what is wrong in the middle of her crying and screaming. Yep those aren’t a lot of days but they are there.

I must also say that Hailey is yet sleeping through the night, she is close, the past couple of nights she has woken up out of habit I believe and just doesn’t know how to soothe herself back to sleep without the bottle. She hasn’t been eating the full bottle like before but an ounce or two then back to sleep. So maybe in the next month. So Kenny and I are running on most days of broken sleep and a 5:30 am wake up call. Her internal clock is killing me. It doesn’t matter what time the girl goes to bed its 5:30am.

Kenny has been working like crazy and it seems like if he is home I am at work and if I am home he is at work or leaving for work. So he either has the girls by himself or I do and it is a lot. Soon we will be back to tag teaming the girls and able to give them both some alone time and sole attention. They both need their time with us.

I am just glad they are 25 months apart and not any less, I don’t know what I would do if Ava wasn’t able to semi take care of herself while I am taking care of Hailey. She has been so helpful and now she will do things for Hailey and even tell me “I am a good big sister”. She is recognizing that being helpful is a rewarding duty and she wants to help more. Even when Ava is having a major meltdown, Hailey can make her smile.

So trying 3’s, teething, busy schedules and we are all surviving. We are all loved and taken care of. All I can say is that I am thankful Kenny is home, he’s not overseas on duty, he doesn’t work a lot of doubles to be away for days at a time, and his shift allows him a few straight days with the girls. If he wasn’t home I wouldn’t know what to do because he allows me my 20 minute break to take a relaxing bath, he cooks dinner, and he can take Ava outside or over to a cousins so I can sit for a minute.