Peanut Butter and Jelly

After his 5th Birthday, I gave L a peanut butter and jelly sandwich making lesson.  Most days when I sit down to nurse baby O the big kids immediately run to me and start begging for food.  It's amazing how they go from being perfectly content to starving in a matter of seconds.  One day L's begging and whining drove me so crazy that I decided to just teach him how to make his own sandwich.  I know at some point he'll have to learn it himself, so why not a few days after he turned 5?  So, I sat down with him and gave him specific instructions: use a spoon to get the jelly out and then use the back of the spoon to spread the jelly.  Use a knife to spread the peanut butter, but don't pull out too much at a time or you'll rip the bread.  Together we made a pretty great sandwich!

The real test came a few days later when he wanted to try it all by himself... while teaching his little sister too.  It was the messiest process I have ever seen, and days later I'm still finding sticky spots, but he made two perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (with probably 3 times the amount of jelly that I use).  It took him about 45 minutes and he shed some tears in the process over his sister getting in the way, or doing it wrong, but in the end he was so proud of himself!

L, explaining it all to E

The Ultimate Sandwich Maker!

Look at the concentration on L's face!

 

Enchanted Princess Event at the Monkey's Treehouse

On Thursday, I took E to the Monkey's Treehouse to meet Sleeping Beauty, one of the enchanted princesses at Enchantedprincessevents.com.  As most know, E is a big princess fan so I knew it would be the perfect thing to do with her while her big brother was at preschool.  We arrived about an hour before Sleeping Beauty so, for the first hour, she just played at the Monkey's Treehouse: climbing, sliding, pushing baby dolls around in a stroller, and shopping in the pretend super market.

E, with her Princess Leia Buns

Up she goes...

She loves to climb!

My beautiful princess in the ball pit

When Sleeping Beauty arrived, E was busy with a snack, so we watched from a distance (the party room).  Sleeping Beauty sat down on the floor and encouraged all the girls to gather around her.  Then she asked each child one by one their name and told them each one beautiful/special thing about them.  Each conversation went something like, "oh X, it is wonderful to meet you. You have such beautiful Cinderella-blue eyes.  I am so glad you are here!"  She was absolutely fantastic with the girls. After she'd introduced herself to each child, she sang a few songs, and then asked everyone to scoot really close to listen to a story.

E gathered around when it was time to listen to the story.  E was so cute because she literally had her eyes glued on Sleeping Beauty.

Listening to the story

After the story, she asked each girl to get in a line to have their picture taken and to get a sticker and coloring page.  I was not sure if E would be confident enough to sit with a character, but she did not hesitate at all.  She climbed up into her lap with a big smile on her face.

E and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

Waiting for her autograph

Waiting for a sticker

E put her stick on her coloring page

On her way home she told me, "when I grow up I can be a real princess. I sing songs to girls, read books, and then give every girl a hug and a picture."  What a perfect way to spend the morning with my own little princess!

Baby O, Sleep Update

The night of my previous post I put O to bed and he slept for 6 hours before waking to nurse.  The next night 6-7 hours.  And the next night I woke HIM after nearly 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  It was amazing the difference that feeding him more frequently during the day made in his night time sleep.  It seems that as long as I feed him every 2 hours during the day, he'll sleep between 5-7+ hours… BUT that's so hard.  He nurses for a good 15-20 minutes at each feeding so that means I basically have only an hour and a half between feedings to do anything semi-productive.  So, the good news is that I know how to get him to sleep longer, but the bad news is that it's not easy.

My goal is to continue nursing for another month and a half.  I nursed my others longer, but its just too stressful.  If I were sleeping better, and not having to focus so much of my life on nursing, I might continue, but I doubt things are really going to get that much easier in 2 months.

He's such a great sleeper in general though.  I took the picture below when I turned around and found him asleep while I was making dinner.  I had been singing at the top of my lungs, but apparently he didn't mind... just fell asleep in the middle of the kitchen.  He's such a sweet boy.