Cra-cker

We don't have a lot to report this week, since everyone (except me, so far!) has been sick and a little grumpy lately.  Noah's new favorite word lately is "cracker," but he uses it for everything.  Admittedly, he does eat a lot of crackers, because it's the only way we can keep him quiet in certain social settings!  I'm feeling a little ghetto about this, but I routinely throw a sleeve of Ritz crackers in my purse when I'm heading out the door with Noah, and feed them to him as we run errands.  I used to carefully pack healthy snacks for Evie when she was a baby...my poor second child!

Grumpy guy having a popsicle when he wasn't feeling good

Finally, over the weekend, we got to have some fun.  I felt like I was on vacation Saturday, becuase Noah and I went for a nice long walk on the bike path with Jenny and Onyx, then browsed Church Street, the farmer's market, and had lunch.  I was in no rush to go home and back to the battle of the moods with Evie.

How cute are they?!

Chilling in Burlington

Matt was playing at Breakwaters on Sunday, and I didn't think I had the energy to pack up the kids and deal with Roscoe's separation anxiety, and we almost stayed home.  Sometimes the idea of packing all the bags, snacks, diapers, toys, sunscreen, etc. is paralyzing, especially when the moods are iffy.  But, Sunday reminded me why it's worth it to plow through.  It was 75 degrees, sunny and beautiful on the lake, and the Riggen cousins showed up and played with Evie for most of the gig.  Both kids were very well-behaved, and it was so relaxing and nice that I even took the kids for creemees on the way home.  I'll consider that a parenting win!

We have started reading this book called "1-2-3 Magic" that our pediatrician recommended, in hopes of making some progress with Evie with some of her difficult behaviors.  The biggest challenge when I'm home with both kids is that she'll do annoying stuff that she knows is wrong, like rock the chair in Noah's room really hard and make it tip over while I'm changing his diaper, or get right in his face and be obnoxiously loud and make him cry while I'm trying to get lunch together, or kick her legs for no reason, knowing that Noah is close by and will likely come into her path.  It is obviously attention-seeking behavior, but it's causing me a lot of stress when I'm alone with the two of them.  I feel like something needs to change before Evie's summer break from school starts (next week!), and I want to get back to having fun instead of being grumpy Mom.  I'm only a chapter into the book, but I already feel hopeful about it.  Fingers crossed that we are able to make some positive changes!