March 2014

March 2014

March has been a challenging month for us.  I know each family has their ups and downs, but we are in the middle of a difficult stretch of kids waking up at night that may be normal, but it is unexpected and you think once your kids sleep through the night that you accomplished the “goal” and really that is just a phase which can flip on you in a second.  I will talk about this a little bit more below.  But we are excited about some warmer weather coming and the ability to get outside as we get out of March into April. 

We went to Cincinnati to visit the Depp's on the last Saturday of the month.  Last year, when we were close to having Sarah, they came for a day visit and we wanted to return the favor since they are expecting a baby in a few weeks.  Man, it was a great time.  Their daughter and Allison played together all day long and they were both exhausted at the end of the day.  It was fun to watch Allison play with another kid, as we know she does it each day, but we rarely see it for too long.  Most of the kids we are able to see her with on a social setting are older, so it was fun to see her interact and help create games to play instead of just following the older kids. 

Sarah has started crawling!  She took her first few movements on March 20^th and hasn’t stopped since.  She is rarely in a hurry to go anywhere, but she will creep up on you.  So, we have entered the phase of her crawling toward one of Allison’s toys and once Allison notices, she jumps up to grab it before Sarah can get there.  We are working on our ability to share, as apparently Allison can struggle with this at school also. 

Allison has finally got glasses and she has been a rock-star wearing them.  We both thought it would be a struggle but she does OK and wears them for a majority of each day.  Her eye from the second surgery is still healing, so we only have one lens in the pair of glasses, but we will get the complete set once her other eye heals completely.  We are very proud of her adaptation to this and it doesn’t seem to slow her down one bit. 

Our little Allison has started waking up at night and coming to our room, sometimes crying and sometimes quiet.  This has been going on for several months, so we started to get a little tougher which only made the problem worse, so we backed off and have been putting her back to bed without any interaction.  We have started a sticker chart that she seems to care about and hopefully will limit the times she comes to our room.  She goes to bed without much hassle and most of the time just walks into our room and wants us to re-tuck her in.  We are going to work on seeing if we can get her to put herself back to bed as she doesn’t appear to be scared or fearful of anything most of the occurrences.  This causes Deb to get interrupted more than I as her side of the bed is closest to the door, so by the time I know Allison is in our room, Deb is already sitting up and taking her back to bed.  Combine this with Sarah waking up once a week to cry for an hour or so, we are finding ourselves pretty tired when we thought we were in the clear from night time issues since both were sleeping well until the eye surgeries. 

Sarah’s Thing of the Month

                She has a few dance moves!  Some of her toys make certain noises (as all kids toys do) and if it is one of her favorite beats, she will sway back and forth and smile.  Sometimes, if she is crying and whining, we will just hit a beat and she will stop on a dime and start smiling and swaying.  We need to get that on video for sure! 

Allison’s Thing of the Month

                One day, we were driving home after daycare and she saw 2 neighbor girls hitting a tennis ball back and forth and asked what they were doing.  I told her playing tennis.  So, each time it is warm, we go outside with 2 racquetball rackets and a ball and hit it back and forth in our cul-de-sac.  She calls it “playing tennis” but it is more an exercise of just throwing the ball and chasing it.  It is fun to see her be creative and do stuff outside. 

A few more items from this month:

• For Lent this year, we gave up TV and alcohol during the week.  I know, it doesn’t sound like much and no we don’t drink during the week that much, but when we do, we seem to have a much better evening! 
• Deb had lunch with Julie Gebhart.
• I met some friends at Upland brewery for some beers after work one Friday.
• Deb had a girl’s night at Scotty’s Brewhouse.
• We hosted Pat and Paul, Mark and Mom over for Dad’s passing 3 year anniversary.

Keith’s Random Thoughts

                When we moved to our house, one of my biggest desires were trees and ones that were big enough to give shade.  Well, 2 years after we move in I kinda wish I would have re-thought that.  Year 1 we had 50 bags of leaves in the fall and year 2 we had 60 bags!  So, what do big trees need sometimes?  To be trimmed.  So, we call up a tree trimmer to cut the trees back and it costs about as much as a new 55” TV!  So, the lesson is, think through what you want in life…you may not like the maintenance!