Woznation

Phil is working on the post about Em’s wedding.  In the mean time, I’m jumping ahead to our trip to Indiana.  My maternity leave ended the day we got back from the wedding, but we also needed to make one more trip back to Indiana for BJ’s wedding and bachelor party.  I wasnt about to watch both kids by myself AND catch up on 12 weeks of work while Phil was gallivanting around in the woods with his friends, so we decided to drive to btown for 10 days to take advantage of all the free childcare and I could hunker-down and work.  We also managed to fit in some gnarly dental appointments!  (Thanks Dad!)

In typical fashion, we did our best to split time between grandparents.  I didnt care who had the kids, as long as it wasnt me!  Evie was pretty happy anywhere – but Wil usually needs quite a lot of entertainment to stay happy. Busia and Mimi were up to the task!  They had lots of activities for him throughout the week!  Here were some of the adventures at the Watkins, including Wil and Evie’s first IU football game! Andrew and Jessie came down for the occasion –

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We also had tons of fun at the Wozniaks!  We fit in a few visits with the stumpners, bungers, and freemans along the way.  Evie got to meet her new friend Addison!  Our last day was capped off by BJ’s wedding!  It was so fun seeing so many good friends!

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The kids did great in the car both ways.  Driving through the night is definitely the way to go with us.  Wil wakes up at gas/Evie/food stops, but we put on some netflix for 20 minutes while we are stopped – he watches like a zombie and then usually passes out as soon as we’re back on the highway.  After 3 weddings this summer and traveling with an infant under 3 months – we are definitely staying put until Christmas!

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Here is another quick picture dump.  Phil is officially furloughed every Friday  until October.  His first day ‘off’ started on his birthday. Unfortunately – we celebrated that day by taking both kids to their routine doctors appointments. It was a 2+ hour ordeal. It was pretty miserable.  Wil hates the doctor and they both got shots.  Wil even had a grown-up blood draw. Hopefully we’ll never have to go back, ever.  Once that was finally over with – we headed to Chap’s Pit Beef for Phil’s birthday dinner.  Its in the parking lot of a strip club, haha.  I felt pretty seedy pulling in (especially with my children) – but hot damn, they make a good beef sandwich!!  We came home and opened some presents and had cake.  I think Wil had fun handing daddy the presents – and Phil was nice enough to let Wil blow out the candles. It was fun having the back-to-back birthday so it helped re-enforce the idea of a ‘birthday’ to Wil.  Other than the doctors and birthday – we’ve just been lying low! We went to the science museum one weekend and we try to make it to the park here and there.  Evie is starting to smile more and more – I can even make it happen now!  Her favorite thing right now is when I blow lightly in her face.  Hey – whatever works!

Wil ate coffee ground out of the trash can. It was kind of hilarious. This is the best picture I got.

Starting to get some smiles!

Yum!

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**Warning – Monster post.  Skim if you’d like**

I thought it would be fun to track my day to see how vastly different it is from my last ‘Routine’ post.

2:10am – Evie wakes up.  Time to nurse, burp, change diaper, and put back down.  We’re both back asleep by around 2:50.

4:45- Phil gets up and  takes barney on a walk/run around the park, showers, makes his smoothie, and gets ready for the day.

6:00 – Evie wakes up.  Phil scoops her up and does a quick diaper, then gets me up to nurse.  Evie goes back down by 6:30 – I get up for the day and put on a work-out video.  5 minutes in and I’m already dying.  9 months of pregnancy killed my ab muscles.  Phil leaves for work and I hop in the shower.  Evie stirs around 7:15, I change and nurse her real quick.  She falls back asleep, then I head downstairs to unload the dishwasher and get Wil’s breakfast ready.

7:30 – Wilek is up! We come downstairs, turn on some Mickey, do a diaper, eat some oatmeal, play with some cars, and hang out.  I mess around on the computer, pump, boil/sterilize bottles for the day, and eat the rest of Wil’s oatmeal.  We’re just about to turn-off the TV and pull out the trains when Evie wakes up.  I turn Mickey back on.  I grab Evie from upstairs – do a diaper, give a bottle,  and put her in her bouncer – shes not thrilled about it.

9:00 – TV off.  Wil and I color, listen to some Raffi, have a diaper change, sit on the potty, feed Barney, watch the street cleaners go by.  Evie continue to fuss, so I change her and give the rest of the bottle. While I feed Evie, Wil always wants to sit right next to me.  Today, he played with the lights and found a block in the couch cushions which kept him busy for awhile (score!). Overall, its a successful feeding considering there was no Mickey).  I take Evie upstairs to nap.

10:00 – Wil and I get back to coloring and have a snack. He eats about 90 percent of his cantaloupe before having a major meltdown and DOES NOT want anymore. OOOOOokay?  I grab some more coffee.  He finally settles down and we brush our teeth.  Wil climbs up on Phil’s computer and plays around.  I pump again, hoping he’ll stay happy playing on the computer.  For awhile hes fine, just tapping on random keys – then all of a sudden he actually gets things to start happening – a video even starts playing?  I hurry up and finish.  When I get over to the computer – it is asking me if I want to permanently delete a file with the word ‘set-up’ in it.  Ummm, no I dont.  I get Wil outta there and hes not happy about it.  Another major meltdown.  Im thinking he’s still hungry.  So we break out the crackers and peanut butter.  I start prepping the diaper bag.

10:45 – I wake a sleeping baby!  Just long enough to transfer her to the car-seat.  Luckily, she goes right back asleep.  We do a quick Wil diaper change and we are out the door to the Library story time.

11:00 – Arrive at story time. I somehow dont think to bring a stroller.  So I’m carrying Evie in the car-seat in one hand and Wil doesnt feel like walking – so I have him on the other hip.  Amateur hour.  Always remember the stroller!   But Evie remains asleep, and Wil and I get to hang out, sing songs, and listen to stories with other kids for awhile.

11:30 – Evie wakes up hungry.  I have to get her out of the car-seat and give her a bottle.  Wil is okay with this for 5 minutes and keeps himself entertained by taking my shoes on and off, but then gets bored and starts to explore the room. I can watch him, but not reach him.  Hes fine for a bit – then finds an upright flag pole in the corner.  Before I could put Evie down and get to Wil – he, of course, topples the thing over.  I’m able to alert a mother who half-catches the pole before it hits her and her 3-year-old son.  It hits the little boy on the back and he starts crying.  I’m mortified and apologize profusely.  Within 5 minutes of the incidence I am OUTTA there! Not before checking on the little boy one more time, he seems ok, but I’m still shaking. Might not show my face there for a few weeks.  Car ride home is miserable.  Evie is screaming due to not finishing her bottle or being burped.  Wil was not ready to leave yet. Ugh.

11:45 – We’re home.  I throw on a Mickey, grab some food for Wil before finally rescuing Evie to finish the bottle.

12:03 – Evie diaper change.

12:07 – Evie diaper change.

12:15  – I’m able to get her happy right as Mickey is ending and Wil and I head upstairs for nap time.  Quick diaper change for Wil.  We read a story and I leave him on his floor bed for nap time.  PHEW! That was an intense hour.  I head back down stairs to hang out with Evie.  Shes wide awake and ready to play.  We practice some eye tracking, practice our squats, and look out the window and up at our AKT painting.  We could hear Wil banging around upstairs for awhile – but finally seems to go to sleep by 12:30.  Evie starts to tire as well and goes back to sleep by 1:00.

1:00 – All is quiet!  This rarely happens.  I quickly take Barney out and feed him. Clean up dishes and bottles, pump, write a few quick emails, and fold some laundry.

2:00 – UPS rings the doorbell.  CHAOS ensues.  Barney goes nuts, starts barking and running around,  and wakes up Evie who starts crying. I get Barney in his cage, grab the package, scoop up Evie all in record time – and Wil stays asleep!  I change and feed Evie and put her upstairs to finish napping before getting Wilek’s afternoon snack ready.

2:30 – I get Wil up.  We come downstairs, watch a Mickey, eat our snack, change the diaper. Evie never really fell back asleep – so I grab her, change a diaper and bring her down stairs.  She immediately falls asleep in the bouncer but keeps getting startled awake by Wil, so I take her back upstairs.  This would be the perfect time for Wil and I to head outside to play with some chalk or bubbles, but its like 100 degrees.  So we stay inside, put on some music, and break out the legos.  The afternoon is pretty chill – Wil alternates between playing by himself and wanting my attention.  We do another diaper in there somewhere. Sometimes I can get a few things done during this time, like preparing dinner.  Luckily, I had made a dinner the day before, and it just needed to be popped in the oven.  Combined with Evie’s long nap – I had a lot of down time this afternoon!

Picture from another day – but this is often how i find him, haha

5:00 – Phil is home!!  Another rarity. With all this crazy government furlough business, they are tightening down on hours and making sure no one is working over the allotted time.  Fine by me!  Phil had put in his 8 hours and now hes home (Wish it was like this during non-furlough!!)  I get the oven pre-heated and dinner ready.  Phil plays with Wil and does another diaper. [This is also where I stop tracking bottle/diapers/times and stopped taking pictures…the rest is my best guess from the next morning!]

5:30 – Evie is finally up!  I change her diaper and give her a bottle.  Phil and Wil start dinner and we watch a little PTI while Wil plays with his toys.  Then I clean up dinner while the boys head outside for a bit.  I nurse and pump again.  Phil and Wil are back pretty quick.  Apparently Wil turned straight back toward home after only a short walk.  It was hot out there! I dont blame him! I decide its time for some impromptu chocolate chip cookies. I have the recipe memorized and always have the ingredients.  Its too easy!  A tough pregnancy habit to break.

7:00 – Bath Time!  Evie is first.  She screams bloody murder and has to go first or she’ll wake up Wilek.  I get her bathed, changed, and give her a bottle while Phil keeps Wil happy.  She starts to nod-off. Phil heads upstairs with Wil around 7:30 for his bedtime routine.  Once bath is over, I usually head upstairs and take-over for story and lullaby time, but Evie wakes up and fusses some more.  Phil is in charge of lullabies tonight.

8:00 – Wil is asleep. Evie is not.  I change her again and Phil tries another bottle while I try to write a few more emails. We talk about our days and my fall schedule once maternity leave is over, Evie is in and out of sleep depending on if she has her pacifier. I pump once last time and then head upstairs with Evie while Phil takes Barney out.

9:00 – I change Evie one last time and try to ‘top-her-off’ before bedtime.  I think she was finally asleep by 9:30-ish.  Phil and I were shortly behind her.   Around 1:30 am the next day – we started all over again!

*******

So lets see:  13 diapers for Evie, 8 for Wil;  1 major meltdown for Evie, 2 or 3 for Wil; 5 pumping sessions and a few nursing sessions; only 5 episodes of Mickey (thats really good for me these days!); and 1 full hour while they were both asleep! Other than the fact that we nearly impaled a small child at the library – I would call it a successful day!

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I would drive 1500 miles and I would drive 1500 more, just to see my little brother get married. (Benny and Joon anyone?) Seriously wouldnt have missed it for the world.  If I have any more kids, it’s because of pictures like this:

Siblings are the best, arent they?!

We drove through the night Thursday and arrived Friday morning.  As horrible as 14 hours in the car with 2 kids is, my sister had it worse being stuck on a plane with 2 little ones as she got re-routed from chicago to st. louis amid a storm.  We finally all arrived at the rehearsal dinner Friday night.  As always, I was terrible about taking pictures, so most of these are swiped from facebook.  The wedding was absolutely stunning!!  My sister-in-law was freaking gorgeous and all the details of the wedding were flawless.  Check out that veil:

Her grandmother made that thing!  Unbelievable!  We had a blast hanging out with all the family.  Busia and Dziadzia were there for the occasion and helped out with the kiddos. Along with Uncle Nick who got to meet Evie for the first time.  The only photo we have of the weekend was Wil looking dapper at the rehearsal dinner:

On Sunday after the brunch, we were able to meet up with some of Phil’s chicago friends who we hadnt seen in nearly 3 years!  Of course, I dont have pictures of the friends themselves.  But we do have a few of Wil and his newest friend (betrothed) Alyssa:

I unfortunately didnt catch any of Evie’s betrothed, Eli, but it was great getting to meet all these new little ones.  Thanks to Jared, Karen, and Jon for meeting up with us – we really miss you guys.  After we hung out on Sunday afternoon, we made the long drive home and made it back by early Monday.  All in all, it was a fabulous weekend. Congrats to Andrew and Jessie – such a wonderful celebration of all good things to come. Welcome to the fam!

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As crazy as my life feels right now, I understand that its going to get a whole lot crazier.  And though things feel hectic, we actually have a pretty predictable schedule around here and I wanted to document it before everything changes again.  Im sure I’ll look back on this and notice how easy we had it!

6:15 am Alarm goes off

Phil is long gone by this time.  He usually wakes up at 5:00 and is out the door immediately to go to the gym, or gets ready at home and leaves for work by 6:00.  I get up and start preparing lunch  for daycare and work.  I have my breakfast and check my email while I watch the Conan monologue from the night before.  I take Barney out, then prepare Wil’s morning oatmeal and milk.  At 7:00 – I go and wake Wil up, though sometimes he is already stirring by now.  Every morning, as soon as I walk in he starts pointing at 4 things: (1) His solar system mobile (2) His map of the earth (3) His tree and (4) his dinosaur.  He can say map and tree, but is still working on dinosaur and solar system.  We go downstairs and have breakfast, watch some disney junior, play with our cars, or read some books.  Then we get ready for the day.  We change our clothes, brush our teeth, feed barney, and put things in our bags.  By 8:00 we are out the door and on our way to daycare/work.

Wil’s daycare is in the old National Bohemian Brewery building.  Natty Boh is the beer that everyone drinks in Baltimore and though its not made in Baltimore anymore, you see ‘Boh’ the mascot everywhere – there is even a little display of old bottles and memorabilia on the way into daycare.   Wils favorite things to do on the way to school are to buckle (or as he says, ‘Pap’ for ‘Snap’) the carseat straps, points out all the ‘Bohs’ he sees, and closing any door that is even cracked open.  He likes to sit in his cubby while I put his things away, and then carries his lunch over to the fridge and puts it away.  He does pretty well at drop-off.  Though sometimes I need to stay an extra few minutes and play with him as he settles into his surroundings.

Then I am off to work.  Its about 2 miles from Wils daycare.  I can usually find street parking less than .5 miles way from my building.  And then can walk  from there.  Luckily, there are plenty of clover patches to keep me entertained.

I share my office with one other biostatistician.  Though he works out of another location, too, so hes only there 2 days a week.  I have very slight seniority, and therefore have the window desk 🙂 with a nice view of the library.  I work in the School of Public Heath and it resembles most other universities – with the except of a giant research hospital right next door to us.  Im usually in the office by 8:45ish and work until 3:45 ish.  I am not teaching 4th quarter, but taught the 620-series Labs for 2nd and 3rd quarter.  During that time, I would generally teach labs from 1:30 – 3:30, 2-3 times a week, depending on the schedule.  The course itself consisted of hundreds of students, but then they broke off into small lab classes where I went over more in-depth examples of the theoretical material covered in lecture.  I snapped a picture of my empty classroom over the weekend.  Depending on who felt like learning statistics that day, I would either have 15 students or 50 students.

Then I high-tail it home to take Barney out again.  And I can usually unload the dish-washer, start a load of laundry, get dinner prepped, run to the grocery store OR eat a snack (when I read back over that it was starting to sound like I did all of those things daily, haha.  Not the case, that is a big-fat OR in the list of things done.  Im very lucky if one of them accomplished). At 4:00 – I head back out to get Wil from daycare.  Depending on his mood and appetite (and my appetite!), we either come back home or sometimes head to the park (or meet up with my Moms group on Thursdays). When we park and start walking to our house, his favorite game is ‘Is this our house?’. Where we stop and point at every door and I ask him if its our house and he goes ‘Nooooooo’ until we come upon our house, with the green door, and the flowering tree, and a Barney in the window – where he starts laughing hysterically.  Love it.  Once we are at home, Wil usually watches Elmo while I finish getting dinner prepared.  Or plays with his trains, or Barney, or he jams out with his ear phones.

Or sometimes we play with the forward-facing phone feature on the cell phone:

But by far the best time of the day is when daddy gets home around 6:00. Wil hears the car in the alley and the ‘beep’ when Phil locks the car.  And he stops whatever he is doing and starts yelling ‘DAAAAAAAADDDDDYYYY’ and runnnnns to the back of the house! And waits there until Phil opens the door.  Its VERY exciting.

The rest of the evening is spent hanging out with Daddy.  Phil is able to do way more fun things like flipping Wil around and ‘flying’ around the kitchen and chasing after Barney.  I love the laughter I hear from 6pm to 7 pm in this house!  While Phil is on duty, I can usually finish up some work, shower, or clean.  When I shower, Wil usually waits for me at the bottom of the stairs, until I come back down.

At 7:15 Phil takes Wil upstairs to start the bedtime routine.  Phil is in charge of bath and brushing teeth while I clean up down stairs.  Then I head up to do PJs, books, lullabies and bedtime.  Most of the time, Wil is asleep by 8pm.   Then Phil and I can either watch a show (or more often than not, one of us needs to finish up some work).  By 9:30, Phil and I are usually ready to call it a day and head upstairs ourselves!

9:30pm Lights out

So that is a ‘typical’ day for us.  Though we usually have a few hiccups throughout the week.  Sometimes I have to work late or Phil has to work late.  Sometimes we have to order food.  Sometimes I have a doctors appointment.  Sometimes Wil gets sick at school.  Sometimes I work from home.  Sometimes I get called for jury duty (4/24!). Sometimes Phil and I both leave work at noon and go catch a movie (Ok – that only happened one time).  Some days are better than others.  But most of time, life is pretty good!

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