Summertime

 Well, today is the first day of summer and this is what we plan on doing a lot of this summer:

                                                         

                                               

 
                                                   

And in the midst of lots of fun, we just made a big transition to the boys sharing a room!  So far, it seems to be going well.  Eli likes to go to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow and Malachi tends to stay awake talking to himself for about an hour when we put him down so that has been an adjustment.  Eli will put up with Mal's shenanigans for a little while and then he wears out and falls asleep.  So they are figuring it out.

This is what I've walked into the last 2 mornings.  Malachi throws all the stuffed animals, blankets, pillow from his bed into Eli's crib and joins him for early morning fun.  Crazy boys and best friends for sure!  I imagine it won't  be long before we are converting Eli's crib to a toddler bed too, then who knows what type of trouble they are going to get into together!  

And because life can never be crazy enough, we are also getting back on track with potty training!  So far, I see this being a little bit of a challenge for Malachi as he doesn't seem to mind whether or not his pants or wet.  But he does not like me putting a diaper on him, so we're making some slow progress.  He also loves to show off his potty chart with the stickers!  I'm going to need LOTS of patience to get through these potty training days :)

And just because I figure, what will it hurt - we are also in the very very early stages of potty training Elias.  Worst case, he doesn't figure it out and best case we get them both trained together.  After all, they are best buddies and Eli wants to do everything Malachi does.

Happy Summer everyone!  I'm looking forward to the nice weather and fun times with my little family!

2 Months

I can't believe that my little princess is already 2 months old.  Where has time gone, because I could swear we just left the hospital with our little angel!  

Sabrina continues to be a great baby!  She is super content minus maybe one hour a night where she is fussy and ready for bed.  This month she has gotten much more content with being put down for awhile, so I haven't had to wear her quite as much as I did at the beginning.  She has discovered that a vibrating chair feels pretty darn nice so she uses that quite a bit to nap in during the day!

I love this phase of babyhood that we are entering.  She is still teeny tiny and cuddly but is also becoming much more alert and I can't even walk by her without getting a big smile which of course makes me stop what I was doing and go play with her for awhile.  She has this cute baby thing down :)

She has slept great since the beginning but this month she moved up her bedtime so she goes to bed right after the boys - somewhere between 8-9 at night.  She wakes up anywhere between 3:30-7 in the morning to eat and then is back to sleep for another 4 hours or so.  I obviously prefer the nights that she sleeps until after 6 but I won't complain since she is sleeping 7-10 hours straight!  She eats pretty quick and then curls up next to me for a little bit more rest - one of my favorite times of the day is early morning snuggle time!

Of course we are getting to see more of her personality.  She has the sweetest little smile and is so close to giggling!  She does NOT like tummy time at all and in those moments where she is not happy - tummy time, getting dressed after a bath, or if she has to wait a few minutes for food - she has quite the set of lungs on her!  But for the most part she is either sleeping or super happy and smiley.  Her smile definitely melts me into a million little pieces!

She is now 10 lbs 6 ounces (25-50%) and 23" (50-75%) right about the same percentiles she had at birth so she remains perfect in every way ;)  She's entirely in 0-3 month clothes now but is starting to outgrow some of the dresses and jammies as they are too short for how long she is!

We're still working on a daytime schedule.  She is still sleeping quite a bit so we just kind of go with what she needs.  She usually sleeps most of the morning, with the exception of 30 minutes or so after she wakes up to eat for the second time and  then is awake from 2-8 with a little bit of dozing here or there.  She wakes up to eat every 3-5 hours during the day.  She is doing great with nursing and this remains quite a different newborn experience than we had with little Mr. Eli.

On the note of Eli, amazingly Sabrina is our smallest baby at the 2 month mark.  Elias was 2 pounds smaller than her at birth, but by the time he was 2 months old he had gained a whopping 5 lbs, so he was a little bit  bigger than she is now.  And Malachi, well Malachi was gigantic at 2 months old.

She is a pure delight in our lives and I still sometimes cannot believe that I have a daughter after two rowdy boys!

Father's Day

I knew when I married Peter that he would make a great father to our children someday.  He however, has completely blown my socks off with how much he has embraced fatherhood.  Sometimes, becoming a father can be a difficult role change for a man.  But from the first second he held Malachi in his arms almost 2 years ago, he has been 100% committed to being a daddy!  Not very many men could handle becoming "daddy" three times over in such a short timespan but he sure has handled it well!

Not only does he work hard and provide for his family, but he comes in the door every evening ready to get his hands dirty!  There's usually a child who needs help with his dinner.  He usually takes over bath time and is the one who has really mastered Malachi's hair routine!  My favorite moments come at bedtime, when Peter tucks the boys in and reads to them and prays with Malachi.  He is all around the leader in our house!

On the weekends, he gets up with the boys so that I can get a little extra rest. He has no problem getting his hands dirty and sometimes that means changing 12 poopy diapers over the weekend ;)  He's a special man and the amazing thing is, he never complains about how much he has to do.  He works close to 50 hours a week, commutes an hour away, is entirely hands on with the kids, while having to maintain a home at the same time.  He's incredible!  

Parenthood has suited Peter perfectly!  Happy Father's Day to the best daddy I know!

Ouch!

Well, we've been running just shy of 2 weeks now and my knees are all out of whack.  This is what always prevents me from accomplishing my goals.  Peter's the pro runner so he's been trying to help me out.  We have determined that I more than likely have "runners knee" which is kind of comical because what I'm doing can hardly be considered "running" at this point.

I am VERY frustrated at this point with the pain.  We've come up with a few different ways to try and ease the pain, but from our research the key is rest which means I am going to fall behind in my schedule.  I am very angry about that and can't believe that just two weeks in, I already have to cut back but I've tried to push through the pain this last week and it's getting much worse by doing that.  Everything says that I will be able to run eventually, but I will just have to take it slower than everyone else.  So hopefully I will still be able to accomplish my goals eventually but I am completely disheartened that it is already effecting me this much.  I knew going into this that I have very weak knees though.

So Peter is still going to be on track to run his first 5K at the end of July.  My HOPE is to be able to run my first one by the end of September.  I will continue to walk until my knees are feeling better then will gradually build up my running time.  I will also continue to do strength training at home and hopefully by building upper leg muscles that will help strengthen my knees.  I'm not going to give up on this goal yet!

Old Navy Swimsuit Sample

The amazing opportunities from Crowdtap just keep coming!  I had an opportunity last week to participate in an Old Navy Sample and Share for swimsuits.  This means, that I was sent a coupon for a FREE swimsuit for me and a friend!  It doesn't get much better then that and I was in desperate need of a new swimsuit!  Considering my clothing choices have mostly consisted of maternity clothes these last 2 years I am in need of pretty much an entirely new wardrobe that I am building as I can!  So to get an opportunity to get something entirely free was perfect!

I admit, I wasn't too sure that I would find something that I liked but I was thrilled with all the choices Old Navy had!  I was able to find something that I absolutely loved and was perfectly comfortable wearing in this 7 week post-partum body of mine.  So if you are shopping around for a new swimsuit this summer, check out Old Navy, I know they have some pretty good sales going on right now too!

And seriously, if you are not a member of crowdtap yet, what are you waiting for?  I'm not even exaggerating when I say I've cashed out hundreds of dollars in amazon giftcards and gotten amazing opportunities to try out new products.  So please check it out using my referral link below:

Boys will be Boys

Oh sure, they may look sweet here!

But don't let them try to fool you, because there have been a lot of timeouts going on around here this week!

This has been a particularly rough week with these boys and I have had to remind myself many times that they are 1 and 2 year old little boys with TONS of energy to burn and LOTS of rain outside preventing them from getting outside this spring! 

So I decided to photograph a few of the outlets in which they have chosen to get out their energy this week:

                                                         Crushing their snacks on my couch:

                                                        Spitting water on the rocking chair:

                                                            Throwing snacks all over the floor:
                                              (often times this is followed by jumping on them!)

                                                            Tag teaming escape routes!

                                                        Reciting the ABC's on his "pedestal":

                                         Yelling at the dog and trying to escape for the 500th time:

                                         Sitting (or standing) on things they aren't supposed to:

                                                         Screaming while mommy cooks:

                                                             Spitting water on themselves:

                       Pulling rungs out of the blinds and throwing them over the gate (with other items)

          Teaching little brother how to climb on dangerous toys (which result in bloody noses that big brother uses as finger paint while mommy gets the bleeding to stop - yes, that DID happen!)

It has been quite a week, let me just say that now!  Boys are definitely a special species!  I really do love being the mommy to boys but I really hope this weather gets nice soon so they can burn that energy OUTSIDE of my home!  I am somewhat shocked we survived this week with just one bloody nose and no ER trips!

And just for fun, a precious picture of what the princess does (most days)!  I am SURE she will NEVER do ANY of the things these boys do ;)

The Run-Around

When we had Eli, with all of his medical needs and time in the NICU, I expected a rather large medical bill - and that was delivered to us.  But, I admit to being very surprised when medical bills for this, rather straightforward and easy birth started coming in.  With this delivery, our problem seemed to be with my 3 triage visits (sent by my doctor) for monitoring.  One such visit was completely denied by our insurance company and the other two had high enough co-pays attached to them (and some denied services) that they might as well have been denied!  The whole thing was frustrating and didn't make sense to me, so I figured one simple call to the insurance company would clear this up!

Boy was I wrong!  I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with our insurance company, which to add complication to the whole matter, Peter's company switched insurance companies as of June 1st so this is his old insurance company now.  All was calm in our home when I started the call, until some door to door salesman, ignored our sign on our door that says NO SOLICITING and rang the bell anyway.  This made the dog bark, which made two of my children start to cry and woke up the sleeping child, all while I was dealing with a very confused insurance lady on the phone.  I was not a happy camper to say the least!  Once this call was ended, our insurance lady said that they would try to fix the high co-pays and that I needed to call the hospital to clear up the denied claims because they needed a different billing code.  Sounded simple enough, or maybe not!

Start with a simple call the hospital where the bills are coming from.  They said we need to deal with my doctor's office to get the code changed and then it will come back through the hospital.  Alright then.  At my appointment this week I asked to speak to billing.  In addition to our insurance changing as of June 1st, I should also mention that as of the end of May my doctor has now changed locations.  Her office, which used to be located inside the hospital moved outside the hospital.  Apparently they do not handle their own billing now so they gave me a phone number of the person who does.  I call that number, they input all my information and tell me that they can't locate any bills.  Alright then, because I can assure you that someone is asking for money from me right about now.  They asked if it was an existing  balance - um, yes it would be an existing balance because how else would I know that I owe the money?!?  Well, they are not handling existing balances.  I need to call my doctors old office, which is located in the hospital for help on this claim.

At this point I am about to scream.  Peter tells me he would probably ignore the whole thing if it wasn't THOUSANDS of dollars we are talking about!  I must mention a little bit that I know about the billing lady at my doctors old office.  She is not all that helpful.  She sits right behind the receptionists at the office.  Several times while I would be in the waiting room, someone would call the office to speak to billing.  The receptionist would put the person on hold, lean back and ask the billing lady if she would take the call.  The billing lady would tell them to send them to her voicemail.  The billing lady would then proceed to stand up and walk away from her desk while the receptionist sent the call through.  Well, I believe I was the recipient of such a move from the billing lady yesterday.  I now get to wait for this billing lady to call me back, and it's going on 24 hours over here!

I've been working on this for over a week now.  Our *old* insurance company still has not reduced the copay amounts and I have gotten nowhere with trying to get our denied claims a different billing code.  This is the society we live in.  Maybe I need to move to Canada!

UPDATE:  The billing lady at my old doctor's office called me back this afternoon. Apparently she no longer can access my records.  I tell yeah, this is getting ridiculous.  She was super nice and tried to be helpful.  She said that it really is the hospital's responsibility to try and get a hold of the doctor because they have to work together to fiz the problem.  So she said she would call the hospital billing people and try to get them to talk to my doctor and get it all figured out.  I can hope this is the end of it.


On another note, the hospital billing department called me today with a "courtesy call' asking when I was going to pay my bill.  No, I cannot even make this garbage up.  I told them we would love to pay the balance as soon as our insurance and doctors office got everything straightened out.  He asked me how long that would take and said they would give me another 30 days then.  Seriously?  I JUST had this baby 7 weeks ago and you are heckling me for the money, for a bill that I JUST got last week?!?  Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous!