life with a mini-dictator

hey guess what - bub and i are both employed now! as in working for a paycheck and we ain't gonna starve employed! God has blessed us beyond belief and we both will be working at jobs that we are BOTH super excited about. my excitement is tempered with a huge dose of fear though. i'm gonna be a nurse guys. a real, in the hospital, gonna give you this IV now and not screw up kinda nurse. uh, hello panic attack. i'm so so excited, but so so scared. thank goodness there's a nice long orientation period, i'm going to soak up every second with my preceptor.

funny enough, bub and i both start work the very same day. cue the second panic attack. what on earth will we do with the babes? i won't bore you all with another of my classic freak-out rants. i know we've made it this far and everything has fallen perfectly into place, this too will. i think my biggest concern is that i've been so lucky to basically be home full time with nugg and doodle up to this point. i don't want to be away from them so much :-( october is going to be a little nutty while i'm starting my training. i'll be on days for a few weeks. but once we hit november i should be transitioning to nights and then at least they'll be home with daddy and just with a sitter a couple of days a week so i can sleep between shifts.

ok, enough of that... so nugget. oh sweet, darling, wonderful nugget. she's almost three. just a few more weeks and we'll have a full on preschooler running around the house. to hear her though you'd think a tiny little dictator had moved in. i thought we'd survived the terrible two's fairly well. i'm wagering to say the three's are going to be a doozy. she freaks out about e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. does anyone else have experience with this? she cries if i put her milk into the wrong color sippy cup. she told me yesterday that apple juice was "dirty juice" and she wouldn't drink it. she flipped out b/c bub threw away a diaper box this morning. she's been using it to practice opening "presents" for her upcoming birthday. oh, the humanity. daddy threw away her box! she had her first real puke a couple weeks back and now anytime she decides she doesn't want to eat something she tells me that, "it's not good, it make me sick. it makes me throw up". what?!?

despite all her sassiness, you kind of have to giggle at it. she's so determined about things. she knows her own mind :-)

speaking of which, she's informed me she will have a "dinorawr" birthday party. so i'm busy planning all sorts of dino themed shenanigans. and she's also told me she's going to be superman for halloween. i love my little lady!

doodle is doing wonderfully. the little lovebug is now 18 weeks old. he's still a little hobo, with no place to call his own, camping out in the kitchen. but we'll work through that. he's my tiny little chunk of love. oh i want to snuggle him forever! after we get nugg down at night, doodle and i have our own little routine. he gets his bath about 8pm, which is LOVES. he kicks and stretches and splashes :-) then he gets his jams on and we snuggle up on the sofa with a bottle and hang out. we talk about important things and he tells me about how he loves bouncing on everything. it's pretty awesome :-p he falls asleep and i always hold him way too long. i know i need to let him fall asleep on his own, but at the end of a hectic day when he's all clean and warm and smelling like that sweet angel baby smell, how can you just put him down?!? his favorite things right now are his bouncer saucer thingy and laying on the floor and putting his feet in his mouth :-)

ok and real quick... it's fall tv time! what are you watching?? anything new? we're kind stuck on our old favs - new girl, modern family, HIMYM. so excited for modern family tonight!

xoxo

living in a shoe

you know that ancient nursery rhyme about the old lady and her many children, all living together in a shoe. i feel like that lady... i AM that lady.

let me first preface this rant as clearly a first world problem. i know that this isn't really in fact a dire predicament. all i am saying is that good golly it feels like though.

our house is tiny. i know this isn't news to anyone who's read this blog for any length of time. but seriously. it's so small. and when we just had nugg it was fine. she's got a little room. we've got a little room. everyone was cozy. then doodle came along. and still, it was fine. he slept in our room for a while, just as we anticipated he would. nugg is in her big girl bed. the crib is all set up in their room just waiting for doodle to get in. we were ready, when the time was right, to have the kiddos share a room. then. then. then. THEN our dreamy little sleep plan crashed and burnt all to an ambien-induced hell.

i don't know what it is, but the transition from crib to big girl bed caused nugg to stop sleeping through the night. ugh. i hate everyone who pushed us to get her out of that crib. EVERYONE said - get her out, get her out, get her out. and i said - nope, nope, nope, she's fine. she sleeps in there and we sleep and everyone sleeps and it's fine. i did recognize that she would have to vacate the crib eventually, ya know, so doodle could camp out there, but i should have put it off as long as possible. because now the child wakes at least once a night. and is up at 6am. and fights to go down every night. every night. EVERY night people. the crib? no prob bob - she'd climb in and snuggle down and be happy as a little clam all the night long. ok, so there ya go. first problem. she's also randomly decided that doodle's crying will set her off like an angry little tornado of sleep-deprived doom. ok, well we all pile into about 900 square feet of living space. where can i go with a screaming baby that she won't hear? WHERE? outside? ok, i guess? but doodle needs his little comforts too. and you know, it's a little sketch to be rocking a crying infant outside in january.  ok, hurray sleep strike two. the final straw. we have no where to put this kid. no where. so he sleeps in the kitchen. but he can't do that forever. i want them to share a room. i want them to both be great sleepers. but i'm exhausted and on edge and i don't know if i can make it on one more night of everyone keeping each other up. what do i do people? so far he just sleeps in his swing, but he's getting bigger. so we've concocted the idea that he'll get tucked into his pack 'n play in the "laundry room" - AKA a tenny, tiny closet that the pack 'n play won't even fit all the way into. we'll tuck him in as best we can though i guess. i hate this. i hate that he doesn't have a space. i hate that i can't rock him for an hour and snuggle him in the quiet of a peaceful room like i did with nugg. the poor little hobo has no where to go. how do i help the kiddos transition to sharing a room?? and what do i do when he needs to start going down before she does? i can only bribe nuggie to NOT wake her brother so many times. HELP internet. help me turn my teeny tiny shoebox sized house into a sleeping paradise for all of us!!!!