Mom-E-xhaustion

Sometimes, I dream about being in a fairy tale.  You know, something like Sleeping Beauty... only I wish to fall asleep and have my Prince actually wait for a few days before waking me up.

 

Actually, eternal sleep doesn't sound too bad right now.

 

Speaking of 'sleep'...

 

How you know you've had an exhausting day... not even enough energy to take off your jacket and lay down somewhere besides the floor you were placed on.

 



 

Sunday was a very exhausting day for more than just me, it seems.  Baby A fell asleep in the van on the way home, and since I had to make 3 trips back and forth to get everything in the house, I put her on the floor (she woke up while I was carrying her), only to come in after carting in Baby B, the diaper bag, and various other things to find her fast asleep.  Poor peanut!

 

This has been one massively tiring week!  Baby A had her birthday, and I can still hardly believe she's 2 years old now!  I guess I should start thinking of her as a toddler now, even though she is still my lil peanut.  I baked cupcakes and cake for her, and since she just adores Olaf, we had an Olaf themed birthday.

 

 

For the first time, I 'cheated' with the cookies.  My husband found the Valentine's frozen 'bake them yourself' Pillsbury cookies with hearts in the centers of them for $1 per 24 pack, and bought 3.  I could hardly believe it!  I didn't have to do much to make cookies!  I printed a bunch of Olafs and put them on toothpicks onto the large cupcakes, then using parchment paper on top of another image of Olaf, I used white and dark chocolate to draw out a chocolate Olaf for the top of the cake.  Made a number of snowflakes similarly, and attached them to the sides of the cake afterwards.  Since I got a  bunch of Valentine's day stuff on sale, I used pink sweetheart candies to decorate the mini cupcakes and the table.  And doilies make lovely decorations, too.  I made pop cans into 3D snowflake decorations using my Snowflake cutter with my BigShot machine, and for relatively little work, we had a pretty dessert table (I was so happy).

 

I didn't want to do a big birthday party as I cannot handle a lot of people in my house all at once anymore.  Instead, we had my husband's parents over on Wednesday, his sister came down on Thursday (and we sang Happy Birthday with candles on a cupcake for her), then friends came down on Friday for supper (they have three kids all the same age as our oldest three!  The kids had a great time!).  Saturday was a baby shower for a friend of mine, and then Sunday we were going to have lunch with my family at our house, but I was so tired that my mom said we'd do it there, and I'd bring the cake (hence all the cupcakes and a cake, too.  Instead of one big party, we had 4 mini parties.  I'm so DONE).  It was hard since lately, all I want to do is hide in my house.  I absolutely love doing special cakes and themes and planning parties though... so what's a hermit wannabe to do? 

 

I still cannot believe my lil girl is 2 already!  Where did the time go?  I just love how much she is talking, dancing (she just loves to dance to the Frozen soundtrack), and she loves to give hugs to her baby sister (and crawl all over me whenever I wish to sleep or need to nurse the baby).  Her vocabulary is quite large already, and although we haven't started potty training yet, I really want to (having two in cloth diapers is quite the task).

 

Happy Birthday, Lil A!  You are a joy to watch grow, and will forever be my squishy (even when you don't want to, haha).



Bedroom Progress

The last two weeks have been busy!  I've been trying to get the bedrooms worked on, and since we don't have the basement done yet (not even close), we have to attempt to get the work done while the kids are still in their room, and we are still in ours.  First thing we needed to do is move the door in the bedroom from the bathroom to the hall.

 

So, this here is the 'before' picture prior to getting any of the work done (wish I had taken more in between pics... oops)

 

 

And below is the after!  I reused the casings/baseboard, door, frame, inner wall (we moved it over... you'll see in the next pic), etc.

 

Yay!  We have an entry point into the 'third' upstairs bedroom!

 

Below is the bedroom side of the change... with a few in between pics.

So... door going into the bathroom above, and now the door goes into the hallway (below).  And yes, I cut the wall out where the door frame used to be, and my husband and I took and moved it over (I think I posted about it last week... but I'm just so excited that I'm posting pics again).

 

There's baby A! :)

We also put up the wall frame, and cut some panels to make a wall.

 

 

This will separate the bedroom into two.

 

Notice the purple wall color?  My son will be taking this room, and he wanted red and grey (in keeping with a cars theme).  I went to the basement and found out we actually HAD red AND grey paint!  Yay!  Didn't need to buy any.  However, the red paint wasn't enough to cover the wall in two coats.  :(

 

This last week I did a lot of mudding and taping, sanding, etc.  I've never taped before, so it was a bit of a learning curve.  My husband has pictures of that on his phone... I think... I don't have his phone, haha.  So, no pics. 

 

I finished sanding the mud on Saturday, only to find that it needed a little more mud on the bedroom side (I was not going to worry about it so much on the bathroom side, since that is a closet).  After mudding a little more, I was able to sand just before bed.  Sunday I cleaned up all the drywall dust, washed down the walls, and primed the first coat.  Yesturday I was thrilled to be able to prime the second coat of primer on the mudded wall (and the 'new' wall and the closet door I never painted in all the years we've had it up, haha) before the kids woke up!  I did the bathroom before making breakfast, and then later in the day I painted the rest of the bedroom, finishing the second coat of grey (and cleanup of paint supplies) around midnight!  YAY!  (I think I spent a good 3-4 hours painting yesterday).

 

So, here's the pics of it now!  The red still needs a second coat, and the closet doors in the first pic are going to be red, too (they are primer white right now). 

 

Haha... I never noticed that the bedroom door was in the way when I took this picture.  The red wall is a lot bigger than that.

 

 

The above pic of the black wall is the 'new' wall that wasn't there before.  It's done up with chalkboard paint.  :)  I want to put a ledge all along that will hold chalk and brushes (and contain any chalk dust that flutters down instead of it all getting on the carpet).  I may just buy one from Ikea to make it a little easier on myself.  We'll see.

 

I am excited to get this done!  My husband is getting more red paint today, and I'm hoping to, just maybe, get some of that magnetic primer, too (it is pricey... a 1L pail costs $30-40, and it only covers 25 square feet.  It will be enough to do a road along the wall (kind of like a wavy border), plus maybe some fun things on M's side of the room.  I want to put magnets on the bottoms of some of my son's cheap cars and put them on the magnetic road after all is done).

 

I am so excited!  Things are finally looking like they're happening!  I want to go through the kids stuff today and get it all ready to move upstairs so we can wash and paint that room before we move into it (and yes, we'll be using up plenty of the paint we have in storage rather than buying any new).  Then, after we move downstairs, we can paint what will be M's room before moving her in.  Carpets need to be cleaned in between everything, too.  Glad I have a carpet cleaner right now!

 

So far, this renovation project has cost a grand total of $90 (for the 2x4s and panels for the barrier wall, some mud and tape.  Everything else we already had and reused).  With paint purchases, I'm expecting it to total about $150 or less... unless we decide to buy another color for our bedroom.  I'm not sure if we need to buy any baseboards as I know we have a bunch in our workshop... I'll have to check when we get that room empty enough to put stuff in there.

 

Hooray for cheap renovation projects!!  Now if only we could get that basement done.  (actually, the farm's insurance company contacted us to say that we HAVE to get rid of our oil furnace and replace it with gas or electric by the end of 2014 or else the farm insurance will be affected.  My husband is working like mad to try to get the hydro company to finally answer us on if we qualify for their programs or not.  We've been working at this for well over a month now with no answer, and they didn't even know the information they needed when we asked them in the first place.  They now told him they need some papers he has to drive into the city for, and pay for as well.  He gave them what they asked for when he called them weeks ago, and they went and changed it on him.  Sigh.  I think qualifying is riddled with trials so less people try to get into the program.)

Costumes and Pizza and Sweets, Oh My!

We didn't want to 'celebrate' Halloween this year by trick or treating, decorating, or anything of that sort, but I do love costumes so very much!  My daughter had 'costume day' on the 31st at her school, and wanted so badly to be Mary Poppins... in the white dress... which she decided a week before she needed the costume.  I said there was no way I'd be able to do it if I didn't have a dress to modify... and I didn't.  So, she said she wanted to be Alice in Wonderland.  That I could do!  I was fairly certain we had a blue dress for her that she wore during the summer, and so on Saturday, I sewed the apron from some scraps of white fabric I happened to have on hand.

 

Turns out that the blue dress was FAR too small. 

 

Out came some old blue fabric that has been sitting in my fabric drawer for over 10 years, and I sewed a circle skirt on Sunday out of that.  Nice thing was that it didn't need hemming.  That fabric was perfect for the job!  And the skirt will work for so many other costumes my little girls are going to want to wear eventually (Ariel's blue dress, Belle's blue dress, Anna's blue skirt...).

 

Monday I sewed the 'shirt' portion of the dress, and found a black ribbon in my scraps which became the headpiece.  M was thrilled!  Here she is, modelling the costume with A by her side.

 

Friday morning, all ready for school, we took some 'tea party' pictures with the white rabbit she brought with her... as part of her costume of course.

I absolutely adore how it turned out!  And I was able to borrow a few petticoat type skirts for under the skirt.  I only found out later (after school) that I should have pinned the skirt to the shirt, as the fabric is so slick that it kept sliding down while she was in school (probably due to how she sits down, actually.  Been trying to teach her to sit instead of slide into her seat).  But she is so cute!

We had some grocery shopping to do, as well as hair cuts, so we grabbed some costumes for our younger two while our oldest was in school, and off we went to town.  A garnered quite the attention while running around as a little pony all over the grocery store.

Our evening consisted of watching Lady and the Tramp while noshing on homemade pizza, and other sweet treats I made myself.  No bake Snack Bars (they taste a lot like Eatmore bars... but next time I'll add more cocoa and less dates), pumpkin fudge (another one without sugar... they need to stay in the fridge/freezer), Caramel corn, and pumpkin rice krispie squares (the pumpkin in the squares makes the rice krispies a little soggy in texture, though.  The flavor was wonderful!).  The caramel corn is such a hit in our house, I may need to start making a double batch.  I think we ate half of it before the movie!  It was gone by the next day.  The other treats are still around, although the rice krispie square only has about 3 pieces left (probably gone by the end of today) and the other two are in the freezer (they needed a food processor, and while I was making the first one, the processor broke and wouldn't work anymore.  So... the texture isn't as good as it should be.  They still taste great, though, and my arms got a workout in chopping and mashing dates and nuts).

And here is our little cutie with a bag of chips she got from grandma and grandpa.  They came over earlier in their costumes.  They had quite the adventure going to their grandkids houses that weren't trick or treating and then later to the store.  Makes me want to dress up for fun again.  Not easy to do with my giant belly, haha.

We do love treats!  Especially since mommy rarely buys any of these things.  At all.

 

Hope you all had a fantastic October!  November is upon us... and with that are thoughts of CHRISTMAS!

Super Duper Late 1st Birthday post

I cannot believe how late I am on this.  Actually, I noticed I hadn't posted many of my kids birthday parties as of late, except for M's 5th, 2nd, and 1st.  I didn't post any of my son's birthdays!  WHAT?!  Well, besides the weeks in review I was doing at the time, but still.

Anyway, I need to post my daughter's first birthday, and so, I will do so!

 My kids helped me make a rainbow.  Aww!

 

 Rainbow cupcakes, and rainbows on cupcakes.

 

 The birthday cake... and inside...

 

 A rainbow!  Each layer is colored mostly with fruit rather than food coloring (except red and green... they needed extra coloring)

 

 Baby A just loves all the fun pillows in rainbow colors that we set in the living room.

 

 Mini cupcakes got a little rainbow cake treatment to them.  Did similar with the icing, sticking various colors into the tube before adding it on.  A swirl of colors!  LOVE.

 Another pic of the main table.  The pom poms were fun to make.  I just used whatever tissue paper we already had in the house.  And napkins.  I had red napkins.

 

 Rainbow jello!  YAY!  I got adorable mini spoons, too!

 

 The window with rainbow pom poms and a 'cloud'

 

 We made lemonade rather than the rainbow punch as I was thinking of.  It was so good!  The rainbow 'runner' is actually wrapping paper.  And the tablecloths are all reused from M's 5th birthday.  As for the cups/plates, I love Ikea's kids line.  Such fun rainbow colors!

 

 A rainbow smash cake!  A didn't know what to do with it and didn't really eat much.  I used sugarless 'icing' for the top.  I tried to keep the cake using date paste, honey, etc rather than sugar, but it was not easy.

 

Sigh... it is a lot of extra work to make a rainbow cake, but it is so cute!  I think all the food was eaten up, and I made a LOT.  The fruits and veggies were all gone!  Seriously!  I think that is fantastic!

In all, the cost was minimal.  I reused a lot of things from previous birthdays, bought posterboard for the rainbow for $1, the rainbow sour candies were $1, the decorations total cost was maybe $4 (for the cute cupcake holder she had her smash cake on, and the spoons/jello cups), and as for food... jello was $5-6 (and there was lots left over in a large bowl that I used for whatever didn't fit into the jello cups), whipping cream was $2, I had all the veggies/fruits/ingredients for cake already (I have no clue what the cost would come out to... $10?  Maybe?), gumballs and rainbow sprinkles for the cake was maybe $2... so total was about $25?  Dollarama had most of what I wanted, and I had a lot of the other stuff from M's birthday and among my various trays/dishes.

A, I cannot believe it has been so long... you are almost 18 months already, and I didn't post this until now.  I'm so sorry.  I love you so much!  You are my little squishy girl, I adore how you make this face at me whenever you do something 'big', like standing yourself up without using anything, and when you took three steps without holding onto anything today (for the first time!  Yay!).  You are so petite and easy to carry around that it is just so hard to let you do things on your own... but I think you like it that way!  You are such an easy going girl!  You love people, you love going places, and you adore your grandpas!  And you are always so excited when daddy comes inside!  You prefer him to put you to bed (probably bored of me after being with me all day).  You are already down to one nap per day!  You weigh 17.5lbs right now, and are 75cm tall! 

My little girl... I just love you so much!

Mommy time??

Anybody else ever wonder who they are once becoming a mom?

Now, don't get me wrong.  I love being a mom!  However, becoming a mom not only brought out so much more in me than I knew I had, it also brought a load of responsibilities.  So many responsibilities that I feel I have lost a part of myself somewhere in them.

I hope that doesn't sound selfish, or somehow wrong.  I know that my calling now is as a wife and mom, and this is something I am thankful for.  However... as of late I have been feeling depressed, tired, as though there is little left in me.

Being a mom is hard work.  I never realized how much... my mom made it seem so easy!

Hours upon hours of cleaning, laundry, changing diapers, washing diapers, nursing, cooking, baking, crafting, kissing boo boos, teaching, building forts, wiping noses, telling stories... I could go on.  And at the end of the day, we kiss those little foreheads as they go to sleep, and spend the next hour or so cleaning up and winding down (or in my case, too many hours before going to bed myself, and then I'm drained the next day).  I find it hard to take the time to spend with my Lord anymore, and that is a travesty.  I find that time with my spouse is farther and farther removed as well, which isn't good for our relationship.  And as for hobbies... sigh.  I have so many, and I cannot take the time for any of them (I could find the time, but I'm so tired that I don't wish to... I just don't have the brain power for any of it any more).

So, what do you do?  How do you take time for yourself in among all the responsibilities you have in day to day life?  How do you make sure that they don't overtake you as a person and drain every last bit of life out of you?

I haven't been doing any of my hobbies lately.  Costume making has happened briefly... for the sake of my kids.  Baking is for my kids.  Crafting of any type is with my kids, for their sake.  Anything I look up is based upon something I want to learn to help my kids and my family.  I hardly spend time on myself anymore, unless I'm sick (and even then, it takes everything just to take a nap, and it seems the baby knows when I want to nap because she will refuse to, and when she finally falls asleep, my older two keep coming up to me asking 'is nap time over yet' every two minutes... take Friday.  I was sick... had whatever the kids had Wednesday and Thursday... and while trying to nap they come up to me and ask every couple of minutes if they can play.  I finally say yes, and then they come up asking for a snack, or if I'm done napping (finally fell asleep too... sigh).  Ah well.).

I have been dedicating more and more of my time to trying to save our family money, to making healthy meals that are worth eating (which means more and more time in my kitchen), and to trying to teach my children.  I'm not very good at that.  I don't have the patience.  I want to get my work done, and just be done with it.  However, I cannot do everything anymore.  I am drained.  I am exhausted.  And I am having breakdowns... again... over silly things... again.

What brings me peace?  I need to spend more time with God, and I just find less and less of myself doing so.  It is depressing.  The only thing that can really fill me up is spending time with Him... and yet I feel so far away.  I miss Him.  And I know it isn't Him.  It's me.  But how do I get that closeness back?  Where am I going wrong?

I feel refreshed after the weekend... especially when my husband has time off.  Church refreshes me.  Bible study does as well.  Time with my parents and siblings... talking about God and the things we are learning... I need that.  But then it is back to work, back to the responsibilities... back to life.

Except today...

Now, we don't get long weekends.  My husband was collecting bales today, in addition to his usual work.  However... I was sick.  Very.  I managed to start a load of laundry, and that was it.  My body had enough.  I could barely nurse my baby, or change diapers.  I couldn't eat.  I spent all day on the couch alternating between a hot pack and a cold one.  I actually took Tylenol (the horror, lol).  I am still not feeling great, but I was finally able to help with (and eat) supper, and finish my lone laundry load.

I slept all day.  And somehow, my kids let me!  Even though daddy wasn't in the house much more than making and eating meals would allow.

Needless to say, we missed the fireworks.

Perhaps I can have a soak-in-the-tub-me-time... after the diapers are in the wash.  I can hardly believe I'm still tired after all that.  I guess today was my body's way of telling me enough is enough.  Slow down.  Sleep. 

I hope I'll get a good, healing sleep tonight.

Fairy Day

Happy Fairy day everyone!

 

Today we had a bit of fun dressing up as fairies.  Bram wanted to wear the wings... but not for very long.  I guess they felt strange to him. 

 

We also colored pictures of fairies.  M did the one on the left, Bram did the one on the right.  M really wanted a rainbow fairy, so she made hers that way.  I think it looks beautiful!  And Bram made all the outfits one color, the faces one color, and the wings one color.  He's getting better and better at coloring!

We even got Baby A in on the fairy fun! 

For dessert, we made fairy bread using biscuits instead of bread (as I'm not buying it anymore). 

In all, a fun day!  I wish we could have spent more of it outside, but the mosquitoes were terrible.  I can't put repellant on the baby, and the bugs were eating me alive out there!  I could hardly stand it for longer than 5 minutes at a time.  :(  Instead, we watched the Fairy Olympic Games (short movie that was included on the Secret of the Wings Tinkerbell DVD).  Kids loved it!

How was your day today?