Does anyone know where I can get one of these?

Ok girls, I’m done.

I need my mommy friends’ support here.  I have long since passed whatever tolerance level I had for getting no sleep.  I am now officially either yelling half the time, or crying the other half the time.  Our entire family is in a very unhealthy place and we are all suffering because of it.  I know deep down because I learned with Makenna that all I can do is wait this out until it fixes itself, but I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this without running away or doing something equally ridiculous.  So here are the details:

Kallie has been getting up every hour and a half every night for the past 5 weeks or so.  She’s now 4 months old.  This cannot be normal.  I think I have pinpointed the problem:  it’s that she has no interest in eating all day, and therefore wants to eat all night.  Most days she goes until around 2 or 3 p.m. before she starts really eating a good amount.  From 7 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. she might drink one or two bottles, 4 oz. each.  No amount of force or coercing can change that–I’ve tried.  Before bed (at 7 p.m.) she’ll drink a good amount, maybe 6 oz. (this is all breastmilk, btw).  It makes no difference–she is still up an hour or two hours later.  That will be the longest stretch we get all night.  I can’t move her bedtime any later–she barely stays awake for that 7 p.m. feeding.   I try everything before I feed her when she wakes–pacifier (which she won’t take), burping, soothing, etc.  She escalates into hysterical screaming until we feed her, at which point she devours the bottle and is instantly back asleep.  90 minutes later, same thing.  The result is the same whether she is swaddled/unswaddled, hands covered/not covered (I thought she might be scratching or poking herself awake), 1 blanket/2 blankets, burped well or not burped, pooped or hasn’t pooped…it’s always the same.  She won’t sleep on her tummy, I’ve tried a million times.  We use white noise.  She fights sleep all day too, taking catnaps here and there.  I am a firm believer in sleep begets more sleep…Makenna has always slept terribly at night when her day sleep has gone badly.  Kallie won’t nap any longer during the day.  I’ve tried soothing her to sleep, crying it out, a combination of both.  Oh, and I’m not open to giving her cereal in her bottle yet.  It’s empty calories and most of the time doesn’t work anyway.  I want to wait until 6 months to start solids.  Does that cover it?

Like I said, I don’t expect any miracle answers, but just to hear that maybe someone else has experienced this might help.  Actually, it probably won’t at this point.  Ha.  Happy Sleeping, everyone.

There are no words to describe…

…a picture like this!!

Notice Kenna comin’ in for the kill with her nap hair:

Kenna checking out our *hopefully* soon-to-be new house:

Two story houses are pretty rare around here (this one isn’t, there’s just one upstairs room over the garage), so Makenna has quite a fascination with steps.  I can’t imagine how entertained she would be with steps in her own house.

For Valentine’s Day I decided we were going to FIND time to make some treats, so we spent an afternoon decorating cookies.  The heart cookies ended up looking like giant upside down butts (haha, sorry but it’s true), so we scrapped those and did flowers.  My mom and Kylie joined in the fun this time.

Kylie’s too good to look at the camera, obviously.  And she says I don’t include her on my blog…

The finished product:

Kenna got a bunch of little Valentine’s treats.  Here she is with her new Veggie Tales toothbrush.   I waited as long as possible to show her that it plays music…  😉

The girls with their bags…forgot to take off Kallie’s hooves again…

Kallie helping us clean the garage.  I love how she looks like a homeless baby.

And the Mullet is History

I finally, FINALLY got so fed up with Makenna’s hair that on the spur of the moment I just grabbed the scissors and chopped off the mullet.  The result was unbelievable!  She now looks like she’s about 6 years old, with bouncy curls that are the cutest. 

This is a really bad picture b/c her hair is so straight.  Tonight it was super curly; it was adorable!  I couldn’t find an older picture fast enough that really showed off how bad her hair was, but those of you who know and love her will see a huge difference.

And of course, no post is complete without a shot of Kallie.  She’s finally big enough to sit in her Bumbo for real.  🙂

We’re still here…

Hi everyone!  I’ve been pretty bad about updating lately b/c our lives have kicked into overdrive.  We’re all doing great though.  The girls are just keeping us running as always…Makenna is right smack in the middle of the terrible, TERRIBLE three’s.  I tell my mom almost every day that I really don’t think I’ll survive this phase.  Of course she assures me that I will, and maybe by the time Kallie has worked through the same phase I’ll have a bit of time to recover before those dreaded teenage years, haha…wow, girls are hard.  The attitude is unbelievable!

Kallie is continuing to change and grow every day.  Her “vocabulary” is so adorable.  She’s learning that she can make different sounds if she opens her mouth a little wider or in different ways, so she’s always practicing and entertaining us.  She loves to watch her big sister in action, and always breaks into smiles when Makenna comes around.  She’s laughing now too, so we all make ourselves look like fools to entertain her.  She has regressed a bit in the sleep department…our little angel who only woke once a night for the first 3 months of her life has now started waking 3 or more times a night on average.  Needless to say, Mark and I are zombies.  I’m hoping it’s just a growth spurt (though it would have to be a long one by now!) and it will pass soon.

Here are a few pics of Kallie in action…

Checking out her outfit:

Getting excited for the camera:

And spacing out after about a zillion pictures:

Mark’s sister Katie only has about 4 more weeks before the third granddaughter (seventh grandchild) joins the family!  Her name is Lily, and I’m sure she doesn’t enjoy being sat on by Kallie, haha…

Me and my goofball…we sure look happy, don’t we?  You’d never know that five seconds earlier we were clawing each others’ eyes out, haha…:

More Saturday morning fun:

In other news, it seems like all our hard work on the house paid off.  We listed it a little over a week ago expecting a long wait for it to sell, and within 24 hours we had a buyer!  And as of today we even have a backup buyer if the first one falls through…can’t get much better than that.  Except that we close March 16th, so we have a very short amount of time to figure out where we’re going from here.  Even though it’s a buyer’s market, we’re having a hard time finding that perfect house because I’ve been told I’m a tad bit picky….what???   I don’t know what all THAT’S about…. 😉  Anyway, we’ll keep you posted.

In other OTHER news, my sister Katy moved to New York City last month to start her internship, the final phase of her schooling for fashion design.  She’s working over 80 hours a week right now and is all alone without her hubby, and we miss her so much!  So forgive me if I post some videos that seem kind of boring, but she needs to get some little doses of Kallie as she changes, whether she’s performing or not.  🙂

Here’s one more video from Christmas that I’ve been meaning to put up forever.  Makenna can really get her groove on when she wants to, and this day she was really gettin’ down with Katy.  It gets a little scary at the end how she shakes her hips…  😉