This post brought to you by sheer exhaustion.

I know that you all must be as tired as I am (well, not really, unless you've not had more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep strung together over the past 8 weeks) of hearing how tired I am, and the woes of my children who seem to be trying to kill me by not sleeping.  As I recall, Joshua's worst sleeping time period was the one I am now so fortunate to be experiencing with Lauren (from 15-24 months).  And all hopes I may have had about Lauren being different from her brother have been dashed officially.  There is one difference, however.  The four and a half years of interrupted sleep (or just plain no sleep at all) have had an impact on my parenting style.  On Monday evening, after a bad string of nights over the weekend and three attempts to get Lauren to sleep, I put her in her crib, kissed her making-me-lose-my-mind adorable little head, walked out the door and shut it.  Jason and I spent the next 40 minutes turning up the television downstairs to drown out the heartbreaking screams.  She eventually went to sleep.  Over the monitor for the next hour, I heard her whimpering.  The classic Jason quote was, "Honey, you're breaking her little heart on Valentine's Day!"  My comment, perhaps just slightly jaded by the fact that I was at the end of my rope was, "Valentine's Day or not, she MUST LEARN!"  She woke up once through the night, had a little bit of milk and then went back to sleep.  When she woke to scream for me 45 minutes later, like clockwork, I turned off the monitor, covered my head with  my pillow and tried to go back to sleep.  I did not sleep, but I also did not go to her and rock her.  We're on day 3 of this little experiment and I have higher hopes now than I did with any of my other ridiculous, sleep deprived strategies to find a way to be able to keep Lauren.  Because as things were going, I wasn't so sure that was going to work.  I love her dearly, but we have to find a way to make these nighttime hours work for both of us.

I always said that I didn't think I had it in me to let her (or Josh) cry it out.  Apparently it just takes me 4 and a half years to get there.

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I should also report to you that Joshua had his annual peanut allergy checkup with the doctor last week.  I had been hoping and praying that we would get the results of his blood work back and they'd say that there was marked improvement in his results, or that he was magically no longer allergic.  If you remember, he was a high 5 on the 0-6 scale that they use to measure allergic antibodies.  Unfortunately, he is an even higher 5 now.  As we edge closer and closer to the 6, I get a little nervous.  Dr. Sutton talked it through with me and shared that there really is no way to know if he's allergic just by airborne smells, etc. until he has a reaction.  They once again used the term "relentless vigilance".  We also had him tested for other nuts to see if he has the tree nut allergy as well.  Evidently, until age 4 there is no way to really tell by blood test if there has  been no allergic reaction.  His tests all came back negative except for the one to brazil nuts.  He tested slightly allergic to them, but the doctor said he's not even sure that it is clinically significant.  But all that was for naught when he said, "With a peanut allergy this severe, I'm not sure I'd introduce nuts of any kind just in case."  That was TOTALLY what I was thinking too.

On a good note, my new love affair with my iPhone has led me to an app that I think will be quite useful in my quest for "relentless vigilance" for Joshua.  It's called Food Essentials.  You scan the bar code on a food and it points out all of the allergens that are listed on the label or hidden in the scientific names on the ingredient listings.  So, on top of reading the bolded allergen listings and "manufactured in the same facility as..." and "may contain traces of...", I can use this tool as a little extra added comfort.

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And on a totally unrelated note, why is it that Lauren insists on wearing Joshua's (clean) underpants as a hat?  And socks as gloves?  That girl is really something.

Weekend at Nana and Pap's

It had been way too long since we'd visited Nana and Pap, so we decided to make a trip to Lewistown this weekend for some quality time with them, Aunt Libby, Uncle Zig and Brooke.  The kids had a blast together.  We seem to have reached the point where it's not unreasonable to expect that Joshua and Brooke will play together nicely and enjoy each other.  Lauren loved watching the big kids play, and the more they giggled, the more she giggled.

We really didn't do too much of anything.  The winter weather turned tricky on Saturday with what turned into an ice storm, so we tucked in and played inside most of the day.  We had ideas of some outside snow playing, but the ice took that option right off the table.

Here are a few pictures...

 It's pretty rare to get a good picture of both of the kids together, but I hit the jackpot here, I think!

A rare picture of me and Lauren.  We don't have very many of these!

This was quite the giggle fest as the kids all tried to "scare" Pap without him catching them.  The only way we got the kids settled down (and stopped their high pitched squealing) was to put them in the tub.  Yikes!

This one pretty much captures the essence of Lauren.

And these are two shots of Pap and Josh marching up the big, icy hill to take corn up for the deer.  Joshua was so excited about helping Pap with this job.

What did you do on YOUR snow day?

 I can't truthfully say that I was heartbroken to hear that we were finally going to get hit with a sizeable winter storm yesterday and today, although I do wish that it had been all fluffy white snow so that we could have been outside having some fun.  Instead, the kids and I kept ourselves very busy yesterday, and here is our report.  As you can see above, we did a whole lot of laundry.  I believe there were 3 baskets to put away upstairs and we washed at least another 4.  Have I mentioned how I love having our laundry room on the main floor of the house?  Oh, only 10 times?

Lauren woke up yesterday morning soaked to her shoulder blades, which required everything short of the carpet under her crib be washed.  So, I took that as a sign that everyone's bed stuff should be washed yesterday while I had some unexpected time to work on it.  I show you this picture of our neatly made bed because it doesn't look this way very often.  Actually it didn't look like that 5 seconds after I snapped this picture because there were two little monkeys jumping on my bed!  But the giggles were WAY worth it.



 In the afternoon, while Lauren did this...

Joshua and I did THIS!  We finally made our cotton ball snowman (on the back of an opened up Cheerios box).  I totally stole this idea from Libby.  But it was fun.  We had glue everywhere and ended up with a pretty fluffy looking snowman who now graces the side of the fridge.  Very fun idea, Lib!



And then we put the finishing touches on the long list of things that Joshua needed to bring to school for his Valentine's party.  We had to wrap a shoebox with plain paper so that he can decorate it at school.  And we had to work on these little treat bags that he wanted to take for everyone.  His Valentines, pretzels and little individual cup of ice cream need to be taken to school if ever the kids return this week.

I also caught up on the Young and the Restless while all of the crafting was going on.  I find it amazing how quickly I can zip through 4 episodes of Y&R thanks to the DVR.  Now I can go to my parent's house on Friday and be able to talk to Mom and Libby about Y&R without being the one who has to keep saying "Don't tell me!  I haven't watched that one yet!"

We're already started on our coloring activities for today's snow day.  On tap for today is prepping for Daddy's big birthday dinner here at our house with Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow night.  We have a cake to bake, filling balls to prep and presents to wrap.  I got it in my head that I wanted to make a big roast chicken, mashed potato/gravy, filling ball supper for him, but was a bit delusional in the fact that I  will be out of town most of the day tomorrow for a meeting in State College.  Could get interesting, my friends.  But we'll give it our best shot.

Enjoy your ICE day today!