Life.

Life was hard last week. Way super hard. Nick was out of town to start (for the 2nd week in a row), I got a bad phone call in the middle of the night (never a good thing) super early Tuesday morning, my house felt like I replaced the front door with a revolving one nearly all week and Ben was not a happy camper.

But while it was hard for me, it was way less hard for me than other people in my family. And as much as you all know how much I dislike living in Idaho, I was reminded yet again of why I'm glad we do. I also learned that I can handle a whole lot more than I ever expected of myself. My dad asked me how I was handling it. I'm not sure how, but I am. :) Despite being high strung about knowing what to expect all of the time, I really am a "go with the flow" kind of gal.

So, after a pretty hectic/emotional/constantly changing week, it was nice to have a quiet weekend. We had hoped to see my niece play basketball on Saturday (we haven't got to see her all season) but Ben was still sleeping during her game. So instead, we tidied the house, cleaned up in the back yard, had a nice walk around our subdivision (with a stop to play at the school playground) and took it easy. Today we perused the antique mall, fed the ducks & geese, delivered a meal to a mama friend who just had a baby and visited my granny. Then Ben played in the back yard while Nick grilled out and I finished up dinner inside. We had talked about eating outside as well, but by the time everything was ready to eat, the sun was setting and it was too chilly. I sure hope this nice weather sticks around!

Ben's tantrums & hitting (and biting... and hair pulling... and pinching...) continue to be the main focus of my attention right now. I've just finished reading Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers by Tracy Hogg and I'm going to have Nick go through it as well. She offers a lot of practical advice for what can be a difficult stage in Ben's (and ours!) life. I tried out a few techniques today that seemed to work well. I'm hoping 5 weeks is enough time to nip this in the bud. We're traveling to Florida in that space of time and I know it will be a stressful trip. If we can control the tantrums and acting out before we ask Ben to sit on the plane for an 8+ hour trip, I'm hoping we can make it less stressful. I still have flashbacks of our flight home from Chicago. Yes, we were that family - my child screamed (no exaggeration on the screaming part) for nearly the entire 4 hour flight.

I've been pinning lots of ideas for a baby nursery the last few days. I'm excited to get the room cleaned out and start making it a little boys home. We're uncertain on what to do as far as the crib situation goes. When I picked out Ben's crib, I got it with the intention of having it grow with him - it converts to a toddler bed and then to a full bed. Now that we're making room for little brother, I had originally intended to move Ben into a big boy bed and give little brother the crib. However... I'm hesitant to rush Ben into a bed before he's ready. I've heard lots of stories from other parents that once they made the move to a big kid bed, naps stopped and night time sleep problems began. I'm simply not ready for Ben to give up naps (and neither is he), so I'm concerned about rushing him into a different bed too soon. We may decide to just bite the bullet and buy an additional (convertible) crib for little brother. Either way, an additional bed needs to be purchased, we just have to decide if the money will go to a big kid bed or another crib.

Nick & I are still discussing names. At the moment, Matthew is topping our list. I also really like Andrew & William (as does Nick), but we have lots of family with those names already, so we'll probably not use either of those. Can you tell I tend to favor more old fashioned names? ;) I had hoped to sort of honor my mom with her name for our second child - I convinced myself that I already had a boy, so of course nature would grant me with a girl ;) - and planned to use the middle name as either Linda (her first name) or Darlene (her middle name). Now I'm stumped as to what I could use. I've considered using her maiden name as the middle name, but I'm not sure yet. Any one that knew my mom and has suggestions on names that were special to her, please pass them on! And, no, dad, Wolfgang isn't making the list.

Potty training is slow going. Sort of. If Ben has the opportunity to run around naked from the waist down, he's fantastic. He absolutely gets using the potty and I couldn't tell you the last time I had to mop up an accident. This weekend I decided to skip the diaper and and just do underpants and regular pants. I haven't given completely up, but our experiment was a total failure. Ben just doesn't seem to get it (or doesn't care) when he has clothes on. Added to that, he's completely unmotivated by wet clothes. We'll keep trying, but I really feel like we're starting potty training all over again.

Still working on updated blog names for once this little boy is an outside baby. I had one I liked but now I can't remember it... :)