Pictures from Oct./Nov., our time at Barksdale & Baton Rouge

This is my Aunt Cheryl with Adora at a park.

My dad met Salem for the first time.

Adora playing in the rain. We'd gone so long without rain in Wichita Falls that she loved experiencing it in BR!

Happy with an umbrella.

We read 10 Apples Up on Top at the Logies's house, and Adora wanted to put some apples up on top :)

We went to the Sci Port in Shreveport, and Salem loved this car thing because there was a button you could push and it made a horn sound.

This house was also a favorite at the Sci Port. Salem loved going up the stairs, and Adora turned a lever to move building materials in and out.

Who doesn't like a water table?

At the BR Zoo with cousin Tyler.

Everytime we go to the BR Zoo, I get a pic of Adora with this globe thing. She loves it!

Trips planned!

Here are the kids playing at our house. I am doing Adora's hair, getting ready for church. I had picked out a black skirt to go with my top, but Adora decided that this gold skirt looked much nicer.

Here is Adora in her baking gear that she got for her birthday from the Steads!

I am so excited! I finally have two trips planned that have been stressing me out. Now, what will I do with my evenings? The first trip coming up is to Houston and Baton Rouge in just a month! The kids and I are actually flying into Houston to visit with the new, expanded Bennett family. I am really excited. It's good for us to fly into Houston because it saves us quite a drive there, from Baton Rouge. We will drive back to BR, but at least we only have to go one way. Then, we will go to BR to meet Liam, my sister's new baby! The kids will play, we will hit up the zoo (we bought a membership in hopes that the zoo here will open this summer--it is iffy since the flood devastated it, but the BR Zoo is a reciprocal zoo, so it's free for us to go there, too), and I will hopefully get in lots of baby-holding. Then, in three months, we are doing the long drive to Yellowstone! This is a huge Hostetler trip. All of Jake's bros & sisters except one are going to be able to make it out. Two of his siblings also have families, and we will all be with his mom and dad in a house that sleeps 18! Good thing since there will be 17 of us! I am really excited to see everyone AND to see Yellowstone. And on the way back, we will spend a night or two "camping" on Jake's sister's land in Montana. Hopefully, I will get to sleep on the bed in the camper since I will be, oh, 7 months pregnant.

Salem swinging

New swing in backyard

Here is our new swing in our backyard. We can easily take the kiddo swing down and hang our two-person "porch" swing, too. It's a lot of fun for everyone :)

Thankful

Ok, I was in a really bad mood that last post because Salem was waking up AGAIN and I am afraid to go to bed because Adora is in my room and I have to transfer her to her room, risking waking both of them up again. Jake is flying right now, so I have to do it by myself.

These are the things that I have to be thankful for, though:
My kids' health--despite minor illnesses, my kids are both healthy--I can't say the same for everyone I know
Our finances--I hate that our home in WF hasn't sold yet, but I am joyful that we are able to pay for both of our homes and even to fix the flood damage in this home and even still be able to consider things like trips to Baton Rouge, Houston, and Yellowstone, and even the super-expensive YMCA membership (did I mention how expensive it is? It is a non-profit! It is $72/month plus $4.50 each time I take the kids to the childcare!)
Our new baby on the way--I am so excited to get to know this new little person. Adora is so sweet and she wants to learn about the new baby each day. He or she is the size of an apple and weighs 2.5 oz right now.
The weather--I didn't realize how hard the winter was here until it warmed up this weekend and we could actually go outside! It was in the 60s today, and it was beautiful. We went for a walk in Oak Park, I pulled Salem in the wagon and Adora roller skated around our street, we went for a walk in our neighborhood, and I pushed the kids on the swings--all this afternoon! Plus, I got to cook dinner while the kids played together outside almost the whole time, 'til Salem started eating rocks. And I got to turn the heater off for the first time since we moved here! It was all glorious.
A newly-born nephew and two nieces on the way very soon!
People who love me

I need to go to bed, but I could go on if I wanted to. Good night!

No sleep

My children hate to sleep. 95% of the reason why I am so exhausted is that I haven't slept through the night in a very long time. The other 5% is that I am pregnant and breastfeeding. The number one thing I am nervous about with the new baby coming is my sleep.

Salem used to be a good sleeper. She seemed programmed to sleep a lot at night almost ever since she was born, and even better after she was a couple of months old. She wanted to sleep in until about 9 every morning. Unfortunately, Adora would wake up at about 7 and come into our room, and Salem would wake up. That wasn't that big of a deal in retrospect, at least compared to what we have gone through since then. The really big deal came when we moved. Being homeless for over three months, moving from place to place, sharing rooms with multiple people, etc. really killed her sleep habits. She started waking up several times at night and refusing to go back to sleep without being nursed. For the sake of the other people in the room, I had to give in and do that. Then, once we got to Minot, she just started waking up earlier and earlier. She now permanently shares a room with Salem. That's what living in an essentially 2-BR house will get you. It is impossible to sleep train her without waking up Adora. We have tried to put Adora in our room, but our walls are not insulated, we don't even have closet doors, and our room is RIGHT NEXT to Adora and Salem's. Salem now wakes up between 4:30 and 5:30 each morning and sometimes dozes for a little while before Adora wakes up around 6:30. Sometimes. We do keep wanting to try to sleep train again, putting Adora on the floor in our room for a week or so, but Salem has basically been sick and/or teething for the past 2 months, so we haven't even had a chance to do that.

Daylight savings time was a couple of days ago, right? I usually start prepping the kids about a week in advance to adjust to the time change. I will change their sleep times and mealtimes 10 minutes a day or so until they are more easily adjusted to the new time. It totally snuck up on me this time, though. I really thought it was the following weekend! So we had 0 days of prepping them to adjust to the new time. The silver lining in this was that we assumed that Salem would sleep 'til maybe 6:30 or so. She had been waking up at 5:30, so 6:30 seemed natural. Salem is apparently smarter than Daylight Savings, though. She had it all figured out. She woke up at 5:00 Sunday morning. That's right, 4:00 "real" time.

Thank goodness that I have a wonderful husband who, about 86% of the time, gets up with Salem when she wakes up in the morning, takes her to the couch to lay with her (because we have no other bed set up), and deals with her until Adora wakes up, sometimes even longer. Unfortunately, I still get woken up when she wakes up and sometimes can't go back to sleep because she is so noisy in the living room with him. Even when I can go back to sleep, I frequently wake up multiple times from her noises.

Tonight, she went to sleep at 7:10 and has woken up twice since then. It's 9:30. I had to put Adora to sleep in my bed because Salem was awake, and neither of them would've been able to go to sleep in the room together. Sometimes I feel like I am going to be one of those tortured people who dies from lack of sleep. What a horrible way to go.