We celebrated in costumes.

Yesterday we celebrated Halloween at my parents. It was a masquerade theme night filled with fun.

Linking to: Parenting by Dummies, Project Alicia, Jenni from the Blog, In The Moment With, The papermama and Live and Love Outloud.plus threeinthree

I want to cuddle my babies more.

I have only 6 days left before I go back to work.

6 days.

I am not sure that I am entirely ready to go back. Even though I am an HR Manager, I still work in a retail store which means I will be coming back into our busy season. Long days with no days off, Long hours and insane customers. 6 days I will actually have to get dressed and take a shower, leave my baby and my boy and go back to work.

Today I spent most my time organizing this here blog. Going through all the old post and trimming the fat per say. I found some posts that brought me back, some that I forgot about, some that made me cry all over again and some I just deleted. But what I came to realize is that I am glad that I blog. I can look back on here and relive moments and truly understand how they made me feel. Wyatt will be able to go through this when he is older and get a good sense of who I am and how it was to raise him. Same with Gunner. That’s a blessing.

I remember as a teenager reading my mom’s journal. I read about her first kiss and how she didn't like it and it felt like I was there with her watching as she experienced that. Its great to have those treasure of your parents to see who they were and how that shaped them into who they are now.

If anything, I hope that my boys know that no matter what happens between them now and us in the future that I will always love them more than anything and that I love their dad and that us, as a family is the most important thing in my life. Even on the days that I mad, annoyed, glad to be at work because really it comes down to just them and the love I have for them. They are my life and I could not live with out any of them in it.

I know that working is the best for us to survive and that it will be hard to go back and I will wonder why I wasted so many days I had on maternity leave not being there for my boys 100%  of the time but right now I really don’t want to go back. I want to cuddle my babies more.

We found fall

I dusted off my big girl camera and capture these sweet shots of my boys in the canyon.

What it is like to be second.

Before getting pregnant with Gunner I always had it in the back of my mind that I just knew Wyatt would be able to handle it. I thought oh there's no way that he would feel like he is being pushed aside, he wont show the signs of being jealous or acting out. He is better than that, he’ll rise above all that. But slowly and surely he is starting to feel what it is like to be second. I know as mothers we want to give 100% all 100% of the time. But when we can’t that mom guilt jumps in and makes us feel like the amount that we are giving is not enough and never will be. Well that is where we are.

As you most of you know, the first few months with a baby requires you to give a lot. You give up your sleep, your breast every few hours, your time, showers some times are impossible to take, energy, emotions, everything you have you give. So doing all this for Gunner requires me to not be able to give all that and more to Wyatt and he is starting to see that.

Wyatt has always been a boy who follows the rules. He’ll follow them to the T. If you say something is a rule. IT IS A RULE FOREVER. I have had to put him in time out maybe 3 times EVER. I normally can just reason with him. He is a very logical thinker so if he is doing something incorrect we can sit and talk about it for a few minutes and then rarely does it happen again.

But lately, he is acting out. He’s not screaming, hitting or doing anything in that sense. He is testing me emotionally by breaking only the “rules” I give him. Just me, Cody can tell him something and he’ll listen to it and follow the rule for it. Me, lately if I tell him something he’ll listen to my face and then once I turn my back to take care of Gunner he’ll break the rule.

example:

Wyatt got some “evil scientist” stuff for his birthday. Now this was a kit that contained different packets of “powders” to mix to make things. The morning we got back from Disneyland Wyatt of course wanted to play with it. But it requires parents supervision with mixing the powders. I was “sleeping in.” so Cody while he was getting ready for work told Wyatt that he needed to wait for me before opening anything. An hour later I wake up and look at the kit to see what we could do. Then Gunner started to fuss. I still hadn't made breakfast or gotten ready for the day. I told Wyatt that he could play with the glass tubes but he could not open anything else until I was done fussing with Gunner. He even helped me put everything away but those things I said he could still play with.

I left him to feed Gunner and to make breakfast. Which took a few hours. As I came upstairs to Wyatt’s room to get him to eat there he was surrounded with all the powder packets opened and used. Then he looks up at me and smiles and says “mom, I opened these and used them for all my experiments because you couldn't be here I just did it for us.” then smiles again.

Now its not a normal smile its an evil I did this on purpose smile. This smile didn't care what I said or how much all this cost, this smile was there to make me want to scream and throw him against a wall. This smile was doing what it needed to do to get all my undivided attention. This smile pissed me off. So I did for a moment get upset to the point I had to stop count to ten and start talking to him all over.

I explained how I knew he was doing this because of how he feels like I am not there. I explained how I wish I could be but right now I cant. I did everything I thought to talk with him logically like we have so many times before. But I knew it wouldn't matter. None of it would, not until he got that undivided attention he needed from me. In my head I think of how it would be nice to go out with just him and then I also think how I cant yet leave Gunner alone with someone for a certain amount if time. So what am I to do.

I am left with the mom guilt. The hugging Wyatt in-between trying to breast feed Gunner. The overly used “I love you’ s”  The “I promises.” The “one days” talks we have. But is it bad that truthfully all I want is to spend time with Gunner because he has yet to know what it feels like to be let down by me. When is it going to get easier to manage the love you have for your kids. At what point will I not be letting one of them down? Two kids. Oh, you can love them more than you thought would be possible and do it all at the same time. But to be fair about who and what gets my attention when that my friends is the real challenge and I have yet to master that and honestly I don't think I’ll be able too.

Our vacation in one post… phew.

So we are back from Disneyland. It was a great vacation and if you followed me on instagram you probably have seen all of the vacation photos I took because I didn't even use my big camera I lugged around.
(Also this is very wordy and jumbled all together post. So if you read the whole thing we will be best friends forever!)

So how did the kids do with us driving the 12 hour plus trip to Cali? You may ask. Well they did actually quite well. Our planned was to leave at 4am Sunday morning after Cody’s paper route but turned out the papers were delivered to him late which made us late. Then we still had to load the truck and tarp it down so 4 hours later we left. Yay.

 

Then as we were driving Cody asked if I grabbed his wallet? Yeah sooo we had to turn around and drive an hour or so back home to pick up his wallet. ::face palm::

As we started off again the tarp kept flipping up so we stopped a few times to fix that plus we stopped for meals. We finally arrived to our hotel at 10:30ish but we were surprised that we never stopped because of the kids. That's pretty good for having a 4 week old and a 5 year old. I am just grateful to my mother in law who came with us to help with them oh and I am also grateful for all the milk I pumped for this trip, that would have suck to stop and breastfeed every two hours. But my god when we got to the hotel my boobs about burst with the over filled milk they were carrying. They hurt bad.

The first night in the hotel wasn't that bad either. Gunner slept for the most of the night but my god Cody’s mom can snore. It was so loud I had  to plug my ears to actually get to sleep. I thought she’d drown out the sound of Gunner’s cry and I wouldn't hear him in the middle of the night. How Cody’s dad deals with that is beyond me. I am happy that Cody doesn't snore.

Our first day in Disney was alright. There was a ton of people more then I thought there’d be because of the UEAH weekend. So we waited in long lines, Gunner stayed in his wrapped for just a few hours and I was grateful for the nursing center they had there (OMG, if you ever go there and have kids under 3 find this center it was AMAZING! I could have stay in there all day and wouldn’t have cared that I missed any rides. Man, I am such a mom.)  Cody and Wyatt had a blast on the rides. Wyatt rode as much as he could. He was scared of the Matterhorn and Space Mountain. Which surprised me because he loved the Matterhorn last time we were there when he was 3.  Oh, and when your kid tells you he has to pee just get out of line regardless of how long you’ve been waiting. Poor Wyatt had to pee the entire time we were in line for splash mountain. I am just glad he actually held it until after we got off the ride because that line just kept going and going and going. He is such a trooper. We got back to the hotel by 11pm we are those people who go right when it opens and stays there until they close. Yep, even did that with Gunner. Oh ps food in the park is expensive and tastes cheap. We got one whole pizza to feed as all for $40 plus dollars and it was tasteless. ugh…

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Our second day there was on Wyatt’s official 5th birthday. (I have a 5 year old WHAT?!?!) So we woke him up by singing him happy birthday then we dressed him in his birthday shirt and we were off to Disneyland. Right as we walked in, Mickey was there.  So that was awesome! Wyatt was excited to see him plus he met Pluto. Other than that we really didn't see many more characters but we weren't really looking either. We were all about the rides. Wyatt would say “its my birthday so I get to choose what rides we go on.” So that's how we did it. He loved Star tours and the Mr toads ride. He did those a few times. This was also the night they closed the park early for the Halloween party.

So we went and ate at the Rain Forrest Cafe then went back to the hotel and dressed up and went back to Disneyland to trick or treat. Gunner still did great. Slept in his solly wrap for most of the day and was awake to see part of the trick or treating and again nursing room AMAZING. Also it doesn't hurt to have your MIL there to help watch the babe so I could ride some rides too.  Plus while Cody and his mom shopped the shops they took Gunner too so I had one on one moments with Wyatt which was nice but strange too. Oh man did we made out with a ton of trick or treating candy. Four huge bags and the firework show… awesome. We got back to the hotel late again and we all hit the hay fast. Gunner though thought that it would be a good time to stay up so I was sorta in a daze while feeding him. I’d find myself asleep with him next time me not realizing I was still nursing.

 

Our third and last day was spent all at California Adventure. I was mostly with Gunner because really I was tired. So I spent a lot of time in the nursing center and again found my self asleep while nursing. But oh my it was air conditioned and had rocking chairs so how could I not. Wyatt loved the cars ride and hated the Tower of Terror which I rode with him. (that was my favorite ride.) He cried when it was over not a full on cry but tears of terror. (ha see what I did there but no just a few tears.) We rode as many rides as we could and then we watch the World of Color show. OH MY! That was seriously cool! Loved the whole thing. Gunner though thought that it would be a great time to have a huge poopy diaper so that was fun changing him in front of all those people in the dark on the ground.  Talk about not caring and just reacting. Being a mom the second time around brings much more confidence and a lot less caring of what people think.

 

My favorite parts of the trip were watching Wyatt being such a big boy and riding all the big rides with his dad and how excited he was about them all. I loved the sweet comments we’d get about Baby Guns. The “oh how tiny, how old, how cute” It made me a proud momma. I also loved the nursing center and the color show. I also enjoyed my MIL which if you know me, surprised me. It was nice seeing her being a grandma. It also made me trust my husband more. To watch him with Wyatt and Gunner especially driving us to and from there was nice. The quite talks we’d get in the car while everyone was asleep and of course singing along to the music.

But you know, the best part about rode tripping with my boys, is the potty breaks on the side of the rode. We even got home in good time and stopped only twice for Gunner. I could do more trips like this as a family of four (I’d even do it without the extra emergency MIL we had for the “just in case” moments.)