Trash TV with Jackson

I'm watching The Bachelor with Jackson and he says to me, "She needs to stop crying, he didn't pick her!"

Classic. .. I better teach him a little compassion!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

SS Follow Up and a Return

So yesterday afternoon I had about a 2 hour break in my day where I only had Oliver with me.  So I decided that I would brave a trip to the Social Security office and see if I couldn't sort out the mess the hospital made of Oliver's name.  I get there around 11:45am hoping that there won't be too many people there since it's not the beginning of the month and it's a Friday, wrong.  There were plenty of folks there.  So I diligently took my number and settled in for what I expected to be a long wait.  I guess I was fortunate because I only ended up waiting about 45 minutes before my number was called. I explain to the lady that the hospital messed up and his middle name is spelled incorrectly.  I hand over the birth certificate and his social security card.  She then asks me for a second form of ID .. FOR OLIVER?!  Umm .. he's only 6 weeks old and doesn't have a drivers license yet!  Duh.  So she then asks if I have a medical bill or something with his name on it.  Now .. let me just say that this is what infuriates me about dealing with government agencies.  If you remember from my original post about this I called the SS office and went through TONS of recorded messages just wanting to talk to a live person only to finally be told that they were busy and then it disconnects me.  Well here's the thing, if I could have talked to a live person then I would have known what I needed to bring with me.  It's just insanely ridiculous to me.  Anyway, as it turns out my new health insurance card was sufficient which eliminated a return trip.  I just am so disappointed in the total lack of Customer Service when it comes to government agencies.  They all act so entitled.  I have yet to experience one that made me feel like they wanted to "help" me rather than just make whatever I was trying to accomplish more difficult than it needed to be.  I have always felt they make it hard in order to deter you from pursuing your needs.  Anyway .. at least it's done now and I just have to wait for a new one to come in the mail.

On another note .. Monday I return to work.  6 very short weeks have flown by.  I read in a book this week a quote of a quote.  It said, "The days are long, but the years are short."  How TRUE it is!  So Monday it's time to rejoin the rat race.  Rather than focusing on all the reasons that I don't feel ready to return I'm trying to think positive about the whole thing. 

What are some of the benefits of returning to work?

1.  I'm grateful that I have a job to return to in the first place.  So many people are out of work and specifically people have been laid off while I've been gone at my work.  So I've very glad that I still have a job to go back to.

2.  I'm so glad that I fit in all my work clothes again.  Having a limited inventory of maternity clothes meant that I ended up wearing the same outfits week after week.  Now my wardrobe has opened back up to it's full glory and I'm excited to dress in my "cute" clothes again.

3.  On a similar note I have to admit that while I've been home all I've worn most days is a pair of workout pants and a t-shirt.  Pull my hair back and no make up.  There's something to be said for getting up doing your hair and make up every day and dressing in nice clothes.  It makes you just feel GOOD. 

4.  It will feel good to get back to the normal routine.  While I've enjoyed being at home with my kids all day in the back of my mind it's always been nagging at me not to get used to it because it won't last.  Tick Tock, Tick Tock.  It will be nice that that will be gone.

5.  As much as I LOVE my kids to pieces.  And as demanding as my job is.  There is also something nice about sitting at my desk, working on an important project that challenges me intellectually, listening to my iPod and working at my own pace.  At home the pace of my day has definitely been dictated to me.  I got a new iPod for Christmas and have purchased some new music with gift cards and I really haven't had time to indulge in them at home.  At work I listen to music ALL DAY long.  Sometimes on my sound stage quietly, other times when I'm really trying to focus on something I plug my ever comfortable Bose ear buds in and just rock out in my own little world.  It's nice.

6.  Lunch time errands.  I can run little errands all by myself at lunch time when I'm working.  Nobody to ask me where I'm going and what I'm doing, no crying when I leave because they didn't come with me, no spending money on "prizes" just because they came.  Nope for an hour I can run out all by myself and do what I need to do.  No guilt.  It's great.

7.  Dare I say it?  I think that I have more patience with my kids when I go to work.  I miss them all day and they're so excited to see me when I come home.  It makes me more appreciative of them in many ways.  I make the most of the weekends when I'm home with them. 

See there ARE some good things about returning to work.  I need to remind myself of them.  I will never get to be a stay at home mom.  So I know it's good to focus my brain on the positives of being a working mom, rather than the things that I miss out on. 

Cold won't stop us.

This Saturday Jeramie was working and so I enlisted my mother to help me take the kids out for the day.  It felt so good to get out of the house and have some fun with them.  We headed down to Thanksgiving Point, my mum and I had a membership that is due to expire next month so it seemed like a good time to squeeze one more visit in.  I realized today when I picked Jackson up from preschool that it had been an accidental well timed visit, he is talking about dinosaurs at school this week.  Wyland is always excited to go anywhere and he was rather impressed with the big dinosaurs.

 Wyland wasn't sure he liked to be that close to the big dinosaur.

 The water and sand is everyones favorite part.

 Oliver hung out in his car seat the whole time but I had to prove he was there too!

 Jackson liked coloring on the computer.

 The boys love looking at this picture.

 Once we finished at the museum we figured we would take a quick cruise through The Farm while we were there. It was actually quite cold .. seriously.  But the kids liked visiting with the animals not to mention their pony ride to top it off.  It actually started to flurry with snow while we were there which was when we decided it was time to leave.

After riding the pony I'm telling Wyland, "What do you say?"

He turns to the HORSE (rather than the lady I was referring to),

and touches the horses nose and says, "Thank you horsey."

HA .. he's so stinking cute.

1 month Comparison

Jackson

 Wyland

 Oliver

I'm terrible and seeing who babies look like.  I *think* that he looks more like Wyland than Jackson.  He seems to have Wyland's rounder face.  But I think that Wyland is chubbier.  I think right now Oliver is close to Wyland at birth weight, not 1 month old weight.  I'm not sure .. I just can't really tell.

Tag Love

Wyland has a serious obsession with tags.  It wasn't always this way.  He didn't love them as a baby, only in the past maybe 6 months.  There are certain blankets that have "really good" tags that he prefers over others. 

I thought that this was funny.  Jackson and Wyland were watching a movie on the couch together and Wyland magically found the tag inside of the back of Jackson's pajama shorts.  Not the best pictures because they're taken with my phone.  But so cute none the less.

Oliver - 1 Month Update

It's hard to believe Oliver is already a month old.  Time is certainly flying by.  He still eats pretty much every 3 hours, including throughout the night.  Doesn't look like that is changing anytime soon, and certainly not in time for my return to work.  He sleeps a ton still.  I would say that he's probably awake for maybe an hour or so a few times a day.  He is still wearing all of his newborn size clothes and hardly any of the 3 month clothes yet.  He eats between 2 oz and 3 oz each feeding.  And we do get an occasional smile out of him, not just gas either (although we get those too).  He enjoys his bath time probably the most of all.  And he is cute as a button if I do say so myself.  He does make eye contact with people and definitely recognizes my voice above all others right now.

Everyone is doing it.

I guess most everybody says at the start of a new year that they will eat better and exercise.  That's why the gyms pack full of people and on every magazine cover they are talking about fitness and exercise.  Well I'd be lying if I said I wasn't one of those people most years.  But this year being one month post baby delivery I really HAD to make that one of my new years resolutions.  With all of my previous children I had taken a lengthy (that's sarcastic) 8 week maternity leave.  (really even 8 weeks isn't enough).  This time around I'm taking only 6 weeks.  With Wyland after being home for 8 weeks with the two boys and Baylee I was really ready to go back to work.  Lots of people ask me whether I'm ready to return to work, tomorrow I will have been home for 5 weeks.  I'm not.  For sure I'm not.  It makes me sad to think about going back to work and not being home with the kids.  6 weeks REALLY isn't enough.  People encourage me to take more time, and I have enough vacation time to take a little longer and still get paid.  But really even if I take one more week, or another week and a half I know deep down I still won't feel "ready" to go back.  So what's the point.  I would rather save that time for summer when we can get out of the house and do some fun stuff together as a family.  Anyway another side to getting 6 weeks rather than 8 weeks is that I have less time to lose weight before going back.  It's not so much the actual weight itself, but rather the fact that I really need to fit back into my work clothes.  The company is getting stricter on dress code which is fine, I have lots of cute clothes that are acceptable.  But I had horrors before going on leave that I wouldn't have enough time to lose enough weight to get back in them.  Then what would I wear?  I certainly couldn't wear maternity clothes and Winter is SO much harder.  I can't get away with some of the more forgiving clothes that you wear in Summer time.  Skirts and dresses are more forgiving than dress pants.

So with all that being said starting in the second week in January I started my at home Weight Watchers program. I've joined Weight Watchers several times in the past and I KNOW it works.  I have all the materials and know what I need to do to be successful.  Then last week I actually officially joined Weight Watchers through my mum's work, so I have to attend the meetings and I'm at least committed to a 12 week program because you know my MOTHER will hold me accountable (I don't mean that in a bad way at all).  I've already lost 6.5 lbs in my first 2 weeks.  I'm not obsessing too much about what I eat, I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every single day.  For me it's easier that way. If I don't think about it then it's no big deal.  I sort of have a goal weight in mind, but more than anything it's a case of how I look and feel.  I don't so much want to have to go out and purchase a whole new wardrobe which in a way is almost a deterrent to losing TOO much.  Well I take that back it's not that I don't WANT to go but all new smaller clothes, but I really can't afford it!!  I mean really, who can?

Anyway, with all that said the next step in all this is to introduce the exercise.  It's almost better that I've done this one thing at a time.  Master the eating habits and then introduce the exercise next.  Jeramie desperately wants to buy P90X, I'm not totally sold on it.  We'll be joining a gym at the end of this month with open up exercise classes.  But I'm not convinced that either of us has the discipline to keep going to the gym.  It's hard to find the time.  But one goal I have set  for myself is to start running. I want to run a 5k at the end of April.  Now I know, 5k isn't much .. but it's a start and it's a good goal!  My sister in law Amber has agreed to the torture along with me!  YAY!  I'm giving myself another week or so to heal some more from my surgery before I start "training".  That's my only concern really is whether my body will be ready to start just relative to my surgery not my lack of fitness (because there's that too). 

So here we go Amber!!  TRAIN!!! 

Jury is still out on the P90X .......

But by summer time whether it be Weight Watchers, the gym, running or P90X I want to look like this again!!!  Perhaps a combination of some or all of those.

Stupid Hospital

So you know when you have a baby and you fill out the official form to name your child.  Well based on this form you get your child's Social Security card in the mail.  I got Oliver's a couple weeks ago and they spelled his middle name wrong!!  So I call the phone number on the paper and after navigating through their many automated menu's it appears I have to go in and fill out a change form.  Umm .. WHY do I have to change something that I didn't screw up?  It's not a change, they need to correct it!  Well I figure that perhaps this information has to be wrong since I'm not the one that made the mistake.  So I finally after many attempts make it to a message that says you want to talk to a live person.  I'm thinking YAY!  I'll wait for awhile and eventually get a live person on the phone.  WRONG.  It tells me there's a very long wait right now and to call back.  Then it HANGS UP on me!  I don't even have the option to wait if I want to, which I did.  So irritating.  Well I set it aside and figured I would call back later.  So on Wednesday this week I had a little free time (I had dropped Jackson and Wyland at Robie's for the afternoon).  So in a rush to run several errands with just Oliver with me I stopped at the place to pick up Oliver's birth certificate.  Keeping in mind that at this point I don't know where the SS office screwed up or if the hospital did.  So I fill out the form for the birth certificate, pay my money and the lady comes back delivering me the document that ALSO has his middle name spelled wrong.  Now I ask myself, what is the point of filling out the form that I did five minutes earlier if she wasn't going to look at it?!  So I tell her his name is spelled wrong.  She informs me that perhaps I filled out the form wrong at the hospital!  UMM .. SERIOUSLY?!!  Something that important, do people really fill them out wrong?  I assured her I filled out the form correctly and on top of that there is no way someone could read my writing (if you know me well you know what I'm talking about).  She tells me she will call the hospital and confirm.  Then she tells me again that if I filled out the form wrong I will have to go back to the hospital to straighten it out.  I mean this lady was insistent that I was the problem.  I again assured her that I know how to spell my sons middle name since I gave it to him (I didn't say it like that though) and there was NO way I filled the form out wrong.  So she calls the hospital and confirms this.  I then get another birth certificate that on the bottom it's printed that the birth certificate has been AMENDED from Rys, to Rhys.  On top of that she tells me that IIIIII am who has to go to the Social Security office to fill out a name change form!! 

All of this because some STUPID hospital employee screwed up when submitting my paperwork and now it's me that has to go all over and sit in line (for possibly hours) in order to correct their stupid mistake.  I'm so mad.  Government agencies suck when it comes to this kind of thing.  They are not customer friendly whatsoever.  It's just wrong.

2010 Fine Accomplishment

One of my finest accomplishments during 2010 (there are more than just this that I'm proud of, we had a great vacation and added another member to our family among other things) was my commitment to my meal planning that I posted about earlier in the year.  I began in April and maintained it through the entire year.  My old shopping routine consisted of going on Sunday's with my mum.  I would always end up taking at least 1 or more of my children with me.  We would start at Costco and then go to Target straight afterwards.  With my children in tow it always meant I was buying some sort of small (but not always "small") toy at Target.  This added to my grocery bill every week and really I knew deep down my children do NOT need anymore toys.  Sometimes my brother Mike would join us too.  I loved shopping with my mum and spending time with her (and sometimes Mike).  It was FUN!  Well .. sort of.  Minus the chaos of the kids.

Change came because of two things, for some reason there were a couple consecutive weeks that my mum couldn't shop.  So rather than brave shopping with my children alone I moved my shopping day to Friday and would go on my way home from work.  This served two purposes, (1) Winco was literally one my way home and (2) there was no guilt laid on me by the kids because they didn't even know what they were missing.  My new plan consists of writing out my dinners for the week and then from that I can put together my shopping list.  I know the reason I stuck to this method is because it really alleviated stress.  I cleaned out my freezer one day and had to throw away entire unopened bags of things that had gone bad because they hadn't been consumed quick enough.  This bothered me to no end.  I hate wasting food.  I would buy things at the store thinking, "Oh we'll have salad a few nights this week."  Then we wouldn't and I'd be throwing away over half a bag of spoiled lettuce.  I hardly ever throw away wasted food anymore.  When I cook a recipe that makes enough for 4 I PLAN for the leftovers.  Either we'll eat them for lunch during the week or later in the week we'll have them for dinner again.  By spending an hour a week planning I not only save myself money and waste, I FEEL so much better.  I don't have to think about what's for dinner when I come home from work.  I've already taken into consideration any events we have going on during the week so that if we have to go somewhere I plan something SUPER easy.  The consistency is also good for Baylee, since her meals are planned as well.  She doesn't feel left out because we ALL eat whatever is planned.

Welcome 2011!

For New Years this year we kept it pretty low key.  Baylee, Jackson and Wyland have all been carrying a cold to some degree.  I've been fighting it, as has Oliver.  So we wanted to keep things simple.  We headed up to my parents house for some tasty snacks, just hung out and watched a movie.  We rang in the new year with all the kids awake except for Baylee.  I didn't take a single picture to document the event.  It was a fun and relaxing evening though and I couldn't have asked for more.

These days I'm almost afraid to leave the house.  With Jeramie working all day I just am not brave enough to venture out with the kids alone.  At best I could put Wyland and Oliver in the double stroller (in an attempt to contain Wyland), but even then the stroller requires two hands to push and that leaves no hands for Jackson.  I don't enjoy feeling trapped at home in the house but right now don't see any other options. So since we hardly ever leave the house that explains my total lack of blogging lately.  Haven't taken any pictures because we don't go anywhere.  This coming weekend Jeramie isn't on call and it'll just be us, so maybe we'll see if we can find something fun to do with the kids. 

So what do we do if we don't leave the house?  Well thank goodness there were all those new toys that arrived at Christmas.  The boys have been playing more in their bedroom too, which is unusual.  I've put a whole lot more toys in there so now there are more things to do and when I'm up here on the computer then they tend to gravitate in this direction.  We also watch a LOT of Toy Story.  It doesn't tend to matter which one, as we have all three and kind of just rotate through them.  I've got to be honest I'm all Toy Story-ed out!  So tired of the same thing over and over.  But, it keeps the boys happy so what can I do.

Wyland got a firehouse for Christmas.

 Jackson liked it too.

 Awe .. isn't he cute?!

 Quick shot with his eyes open.

 What every big sister does .. paint the little brothers nails.

Jackson liked it and then he was quick to have her take it off!