2 Kids, Who Knew

Who knew having two kids would be so much more work than just one. I mean I wasn't naive by any stretch, I knew it would be more work, but sometimes it's just dang hard.

The Epp household has survived a rough few weeks kid wise. Two weeks ago I was having my first Thirty-One party and Gabby came down with a 102 fever while she was at my folks. This fever lasted until Monday night, so she couldn't go to daycare. Thanks to wonderful parents who watched her while we worked we saved some sick time.  This was a rough few nights of not sleeping, since Gabby was waking up a few times during the night.

During this time our little Livvy Pie decided that it would be a GREAT idea to nurse 3 to 4 times a night. I am trying to take it as a compliment that she wanted to spend extra time with her mama. And I just have to say it's a good thing she is cute or I might have eaten her - I know now why babies are made cute, it's so their parents don't eat their young.

Fast forward to the following Friday and as Mike and I are trying to close a deal on our new furnace I get a call from Liv's school saying that she has a gunky eye. Mind you when the case of pink eye was reported on the door I freaked and started putting breast milk in her eye - I should have kept doing it more often because apparently she got pink eye. Off to the doctor we went, $160 bucks later I was home with a script but she said that it wasn't pink eye, probably just a cold. That night she was still had a pretty bad gunky eye, so we decided to fill the script and give her the drops.

We started a schedule of her eating at daycare every 2 hours, while I think this fills up her belly I don't think it really had helped her sleep through the night more, I think it was just a 5 month sleep regression or wanting to spend time with me. So I think we are going to go back to on demand and see what happens. 20oz is just a lot of milk for her to eat in one day for the 9.5  hours she is at daycare.

Back to my original point of 2 kids. It just seems that they both are sick or not sleeping at the same time, which means everyone is not sleeping. I moved Liv back into our room because I was just so exhausted from going upstairs. I am not sure when I will move her back up to her crib but we will just play it by ear. Hopefully before she is 18.

Kids Will be Kids~

An online friend of mine wrote this post - a Rant about Kids being Kids. I think that she has a great point and I just wanted to share it.

Her rant is about a 16 year old who stole money from a collection for cancer patient. The cashier that was working while it was stolen stated that "kids will be kids" and she isn't mad at him....I agree with Always in Wonder when she states that a 16 year old should know right from and wrong. If it were my child Gabby would be wearing the scarlet letter that she stole money from cancer patients. I would make her volunteer at the hospital with cancer patients to know who she was stealing from.

A lot of kids these days (listen to me, I sound old now!) - not all because I know plenty of great ones - don't have boundaries when it comes to certain things. It's like bullying....why do they think they can say whatever they want on FB or Myspace, Formspring etc.. without consequences? Because we have let them get away with that....where is the empathy?

When is the right time?

The right time for what you may be asking...The right time to add to our family again. As Gabby turns 7 months today it's something that has come up in my mine. Mike and I always talked about waiting - at least until Tuesday I thought that waiting was until in 2012 sometime. so that I had PLENTY of time. I am not saying we are trying now, so don't get your panties in a bunch.

The reason this discussion came up is we are currently going through an issue with our roof. You might ask yourself how does roof get you to talk about spacing of your kids. Well our roof is leaking and it's need of repair. We are playing the "We might as well..." game that some good friends of ours played and are still going through with their remodel. We currently have 2 bedrooms upstairs and one large one downstairs. Well if we want to add to our family again and we want the kids to have their own rooms, because face it, I can't sleep with them in my room and Gabby's room is WAY too small for two kids. So We set out a few years ago to have some drawings made up. The short story is that we are adding on two bedrooms upstairs above the garage and turning the two bedrooms we have currently into a master suite.

This is where the "We might as well" game comes into play. If we are replacing the back side of the roof on the house we might as well start the remodel sooner, which means we might as well get all new siding, all new windows and add on the two bedrooms and get everything roughed in...this "We might as well" game got me thinking about our baby and the one we want to add to our family.

My plan had been wait until the summer of 2012 to start trying for another little one. Hopefully (I know it can change) my cycle will be back and it won't take long to get pregnant and we can have a Spring 2013 baby and Gabby will be almost 3 by then. a good 2 1/2 year spacing! Well when discussing with Mike he thought I was meaning to try this summer which would give us a Spring 2012 baby ( EEK!) and have about a 20 to 22 month difference. I don't know if I am ready for that.

So that really got me thinking. what is a good spacing for kids? Longer, shorter in between. We know we don't want to go more than 4 years apart. But I am an only and Mike's brother is 22 months younger than him...so we don't have a lot of things to compare it to. I am looking for thoughts on this so all those lurkers out there and non lurkers please comment. If you don't want to comment on the blog then send me an email! or comment anonymously!