Week in the Life: Sunday

Sunday, April 22, 2012

(Laura is hosting this Week in the Life/Day in the Life project. Three days into it I'm feeling very overwhelmed by this project, but hopefully I can follow through.  I've been taking pictures and notes, it's just a matter of getting all these posts written!  Laura is posting every night, that is NOT going to happen for me, obviously.  Anyway, I started with Sunday.  Hopefully Monday and Tuesday will not be too far behind this post...)

Sundays are definitely our slow, easy, lazy, minimal planning days. The whole family takes a while to get going, and sometimes we stay in pajamas until nap time. This was definitely one of those Sundays, and it was lovely.
 

Breakfast/coffee routine is pretty lax today. So lax, that when Gus is refusing to stay at the table I bring his plate downstairs and set it on the ottoman and let him watch Cars. I didn’t even feel guilty about it because, you know? Whatevs. Some days I just have to let it go. Especially when my 3-month old is getting over a viral infection and has decided he can no longer sleep at night anywhere but in my arms. I am exhausted and there are bags under my eyes to prove it.

 

So yeah. Gus eats his homemade banana bread and strawberries while jumping around the family room singing Life is a Highway. (He is so cute when he sings his jibberish.)
 
Louie is sleeping in (of course he finally decides he is going to sleep after a night in which he let his mother have very little) so we’re able to ease into the day slowly. It is nice. I drink a second cup of coffee while folding laundry.

Whilst folding I have an encounter with a massive and disgusting silverfish which causes me to squeal and jump and start running in place frantically waving my arms. I demand that Dan move the end table under which it is hiding and dispense of the horrible creature immediately.

He obliges, and I resume folding laundry, feeling twitchy.

A few minutes later I hear loud pounding behind me and turn around to find Dan banging a Thomas flashlight on the carpet killing another silverfish that crawled out of some clean overalls he was folding. Gross gross gross gross gross.

FYI they were Gus’s overalls. Neither Dan nor I are sporting the overalls these days. I’ll leave that up to Alicia circa 1999 moving into the dorms.

Louie is still sleeping and this is amazing. I don’t know what to do with myself! So I put away the boys’ laundry upstairs.

This day is edge-of-your-seat thrilling already right? Coffee. Laundry. Creepy crawly insects. Hold on to your hats, it’s a thrill-a-minute over here!

Louie gets up at around 9:00 and I get him dressed and ready for the day.

At 9:45 he is nursing and we’re both a big old mess with milk shooting out everywhere, on his face, all over my pajamas (good thing I’m so lazy and am still not dressed!), and he is PISSED. During this ordeal I remember that I forgot to pump, thus the oversupply/overactive letdown issue. Freaking a. I keep doing this since I started back at work. I associate pumping with work so much that I forget that I still have to do it every morning when I’m at home. Ugh. I am sick of it for sure, but don’t know how to wean myself off of that morning pumping session without getting engorged or having really frustrating nursing sessions like this one with Louie.

9:55 – Pump and make a list for Target. Dan and Gus will be running this errand together.

Per usual Gus is super uncooperative about getting out of the house. Seen here, dad wrestles his coat and shoes on as the child continues to read and play.

It’s nice to have the house to myself with just the baby, but Louie is super cranky. He’s still not 100% after his sickness last week, and I end up just wandering the house, tidying up, and listening to the radio with him in the Babyhawk.

The tidying up is much needed.  This place is a disaster, it gets this way soooooo quickly when we're all home.

I feel much better about my life and level of sanity when I make the bed.

Look at all these baby contraptions cluttering up our house! I HATE THEM!  Not pictured: giant exersaucer sitting in the dining room.  (Yes, clearly we need to put away some shoes.)

10:45 – Baby goes down again. Jeez. He is not himself for sure.

Nap time means I shower and make myself presentable. Well, half-way presentable. I pretty much don’t get dressed until I’m ready to leave the house these days, in an effort to keep my clothes spit-up free for as long as possible.

 

Dan and Gus come home from Target and putz around outside in the back yard and garage before lunch. I am making sandwiches in the kitchen and look out the back window to see the two of them on the patio hanging an empty Quaker Oats tub.

Upon further inspection (meddling) I find out the two of them made a homemade birdhouse.

So random. So sweet. At Easter a few weeks back Gus was super obsessed with my grandma’s birdhouses (she is an avid birdwatcher), and demanded that Dan lift him up to every single one throughout her yard (there are a lot) so he could look inside. Anyway, I am totally charmed by this spur-of-the-moment father/son project they took on. What a good dad.

This was my lunch, after the sandwich was eaten and I remembered to take a picture. Lunch is nice today because for once Louie does NOT wake up the second I sit down and go to take a bite.

12:30 - After lunch Gus and I head upstairs for his nap. We read a book (Five Little Monkeys Bake a Birthday Cake – I know it by heart at this point) and then I put my hair in a ponytail so Gus can snuggle me and clutch my hair. He is asleep within fifteen minutes.

On exhausting days of parenting, which seem to be the norm these days now that there are two, this is my favorite part of the day. I mean, I love the time during which Gus is actually taking a nap of course, because even if Louie ends up being awake at that time it feels like a break. But it is also just so lovely to climb into his warm bed, snuggle under the covers, and cuddle with the little guy who is hard-pressed to stop moving throughout the rest of the day. He is so sweet, he asks for hugs and kisses and always falls asleep curled up on me. This nap time routine has definitely made for wonderful moments I hope I never forget. Some days he is not very cooperative and the scene is decidedly less serene, but today it was lovely, and I am thankful for that.

Louie is up from his nap when I come downstairs, (he slept a whole two hours, good Lord!) and Dan is dealing with a blowout (better him than me!) that somehow managed to miss the little guy’s clothes but get all over our quilt. Sweet. More laundry.

 So while Dan mows the lawn, Louie and I play and fold more laundry and watch some HGTV. He goes back down at some point. (I know! Clearly he is needing to catch up on sleep after such a sucky week.) We end up having to wake up both kids at 3:00 when it’s time to head to my aunt’s house for a little extended family get together.

After waking Gus up I ask if he wants to go to the potty and for the second day in a row, post nap, he does! It feels like we may be having a tiny breakthrough. He has pretty much REFUSED to even sit on the potty chair since last July when he had a brief few weeks of interest. I try not to stress about it, I know it is a process and tends to take even longer for boys (I’ve read that the average age for boys to be potty trained is 3 years, 3 months), but it’s nice to see little inklings of promise. I make a big old deal about it and we both excitedly run downstairs to tell daddy and to get a Thomas tattoo.

We arrive at my aunt’s house fashionably late (is 30 minutes still fashionable?) and have a good time catching up with family. It’s my cousin Laura’s birthday, and she’s home from college, so it was a good excuse to get everyone together.

My cousins entertain us all.  They are so talented.

Gus swinging with his uncle Ben.

Holy crap these two are spitting images of each other.  I mean their hair is even winging out the same way!  So cute.

We secure a babysitter (my brother and sister-in-law) for a few hours this evening so Dan and I can run out to St. Paul to meet our new nephew Matthew, born the night before after a looong 20-ish hours of labor. I stress a little, because Louie has been tough at bedtime lately, and still is not the biggest fan of bottles, though he takes them begrudgingly, but I just need to let go sometimes. I can’t control everything, it won’t be a HUGE deal if he fusses and cries a little for someone, eventually he will go to sleep, and I need to not be such a ridiculously guilt-ridden lunatic about my kids and sleep and them being watched by other people.

Well, Louie ends up going to sleep easily at 7:20, right before we leave, so I worried for nothing, per usual.

Gus dismisses us with nary a wave goodbye because he’s so excited to see his aunt and uncle, so we head out, and it is a lovely, peaceful, child-free drive. Ahhhhhhh.

The baby is gorgeous, of course, and it’s fun to catch up with his mom and dad, hear the birth story, talk about Hunger Games (random!).

We get home around 9:45 and Louie hasn’t made a peep since we left, and Gus is fast asleep upstairs after reading stories and snuggling with his aunt and clutching her ponytail.

It feels sort of awesome to have skipped over the sometimes stressful bedtime process tonight. Yeah, it’s actually really awesome. Amazing how nice it is to get away for even just a few hours.

And now it’s bedtime for Dan and I, because there’s another long, though hopefully rewarding, week ahead.