Winners & Tidbits

And the winner of my recent giveaway is....MomBrose!  (I went to random.org for an automatically generated number.)  You get to try the Vanilla soap from Ecostore USA!  Enjoy your no nasty chemicals soap.

So many tidbits--that could actually be entire blog topics--but no time to develop them!

I am in the midst of a blessed 5-day mommy-cation! That's my own word--meaning I have 5 days off to focus on mommy and home related stuff.  Like cleaning and organizing as always.  And getting Miss Rose ready for Kindergarten. 

I realized today that this is the last Friday that Miss Rose will have before she's a student.  From here on out, any other Friday she is out of school will either be because it's a vacation or summertime.  We are more than ready for school to begin.  Miss Rose is so full of energy and wants constant interaction and activity to use that energy.  Being that she's already 5-1/2, it's time for full days of school!  She's quite excited and not nervous at all.

We had some excitement in our family this week with the birth of a new niece!  Bean's brother and wife welcomed their fourth child.  Their hands are quite full with a middle-schooler, kindergartener, 19-month old and newborn.  Thankfully we live near each other and are able to help each other out quite a bit.  I've decided that perhaps one NEVER stops wanting more babies.  Although my sweet, still quite young, 7-month old was home with Bean, as I cuddled this precious newborn, I could easily imagine adding to our family.  I'm glad there's always new babies in our family!

Gracie is experiencing a bit of the terrible 2's.  She likes to be contrary just for the sake of it.  She yells and does whatever it takes to get the attention she wants.  Gracie loves watching movies!  Miss Rose wasn't really into movies until she was closer to 4yrs old.  The current favorites (so thankful for DVR!) are Chicken Little. Cars and Finding Nemo.  Every morning when she wakes up she says "Maybe Chicken Little?" or whatever the choice of the day is.  (Ususally she doesn't watch the entire movie, I promise.)

Finally, Lily is eating solids.  Basically she just didn't like cereal.  We skipped it and went to veggies and she's eating like a champ.  Not quite pooping like a champ though.  But prunes helped us through that issue.  Poor Bean bore the brunt of that when the prunes kicked in on a day he was with the girls.

We've also had success with sleeping longer at night.  Getting Lily out of our room was real key for that.  (Read: pack and play in the living room).  I notice that she sometimes wakes during the night, but usually just fusses and goes back to sleep.  Sometimes she sleeps until it's a reasonable wake-up hour.  Other mornings she takes an early nursing and goes back to sleep for a while.  Either way--I'm getting more sleep, and that's wonderful!

We are SO close to being done with construction.  In fact, the 3rd bedroom is finally ready for use.  We can't do things the easy way and will be moving everyone to a new room.  Hopefully by the end of the long weekend Lily will be sleeping in a crib for the first time, in her own bedroom; the changing table will no longer be in the living room, and everyone will be set.  The 2nd bathroom has a little further to go...but I'm thrilled with the use of the bedroom.  By the end of the month my parents should be moving in to the addition.

Hopefully I'll get a few more blogs done during my mommy-cation.  Because blogging is one of my outlets and I definately enjoy it!