Miss Lu is TWO!

OMG you guys. My baby. She's two! It's such a wild and surreal experience to watch your kids grow. Most of you can probably relate, it felt like our youth was so slow. I remember elementary school felt like it was soooo long. Now that I have kids, my life has been taken over by a time thief.

Watching them grow, my babies, is such a bittersweet experience. I long for newborn cuddles, but I embrace watching their personalities develop and grow. Luna is such a smart cookie too. Plus, she's funny. She's always making us smile and laugh. And she's got the baby-of-the-family act down to a fine art. We don't mind. We love letting her call the shots (most of the time.) And her big brother absolutely adores her and loves making her happy. She does the same for him. She's such a little mommy. She nurtures and tries to take care of everyone.

Every day before school, Luna would round up Jack's shoes and help him put them on in the morning. If he cries, she is RIGHT there seeing what is wrong. Luna is always asking everyone, "You okay?" If we are out in public somewhere and she hears a baby crying, she will tell me: "Mom! Dat baby cry!" It is absolutely so distressing to her.

The other day we were at the store and a little boy was crying and she yells so loudly, "Mom! Dat guy is cry!"

I know everyone talks about the "terrible twos," but I actually love this age. It's so fun to see them become more independent and they say the funniest things. Luna's favorite word is "Mine." because she basically thinks she owns our house, everything and everyone in it. lol. She's also starting to string words together really well now. It's really fun having conversations with her. She is great at letting me know what she needs. And she loves talking to other kids.

She is so outgoing and friendly and I love that about her. Jack is like that too. And coming from someone with severe social anxiety and painful shyness, I am so glad my kids aren't like me in that respect.

Her favorite things to do:
Color
Blow bubbles
Take baths
Ride her bike
Go to the park
Help mommy and daddy
Dance and do yoga with mommy
Play with her cousins and friends
Video chat everyone she knows
Play with her dogs
Watch movies and shows with her brother

She's a huge fan of Trolls, Boss Baby, True and the Rainbow Kingdom (basically thanks, Netflix for all the OG content) but she is also a big fan of Nick Jr shows and PBS Kids.

Her favorite colors are pink, yellow and blue.

She can recognize about half of the alphabet (can also recite the song.) She knows all her colors and shapes and counts to 10. (If she feels like it. lol)

She dresses herself most days. Including picking out her own accessories. Mostly, I am surprised and impressed with her natural ability to color coordinate. Ha!

Luna is also about 50 percent potty trained. We are following a similar approach of what we did with Jack. Just going at her own pace. If she wants to wear underwear and use the potty, great! If not, we put a diaper on. It's really lax and no pressure. Although I am eager to remove diaper purchases from the budget.

She's still a horrible sleeper and will only stay asleep if I am right next to her. Yes, this means naps are a total shit show. She is also picky as hell taking after her big brother. She will only drink water (and breast milk, yeah we are still doing that. Fight me.) And she is pretty much only into eating green vegetables (yay!) hot dogs and pretzels. She's not crazy about sweets but enjoys a little bit of cake and cookies on occasion. She loathes chocolate with a passion. (what the what?) and would usually just rather snack on green beans. #legit.

We meant to celebrate her bday yesterday with a little birthday party but both she and Jack (and me whomp whomp) are sick. So we will try and do something this weekend.

The past two years have been all kinds of fun having Miss Lu in our lives. We are the luckiest little family and we are just obsessed with our little Luna Marina Dawn. <3

Editors Note: I am aware that I have basically given up on this blog. Ha! My intention was to move everything over to another blogging platform, but I honestly haven't had the time or the mental fortitude to take on the project as I have other projects in the works with my writings. But I had to get this milestone for Luna published. 

Happy Birthday, Jack!

I am officially the mom of a five year old. Wow. That even feels a little odd typing it.

I know, for those of you who have older kids, five seems like nothing. But to me, he was my tiny itty bitty baby just yesterday. I remember it vividly still, the night before I went into labor, the weeks leading up to me being hugely pregnant and overdue. I was desperate to get him out of me and into my arms. But of course, Jack being Jack, did things on his own time table.



On Jack: 
Aside from being late entering this world, Jack has been pretty much ahead of curve on everything else. I'm #sorrynotsorry for bragging on my kid, but he's so smart. I'm astounded by his intelligence and desire to learn. He asks a billion  and one questions a day, understands my overuse of hyperbole and now picks up on his dad's copious usage of sarcasm.

He loves school. He is such a social creature and will play with any kid who looks like fun. He is so brave about meeting new people, which is so great to me considering how shy I have always been.  Jack is still a huge mama's boy, but loves hanging out with Dad most of all and absolutely adores his little sister.



Size & Eating Habits: 
Jack is about  slightly above average in height.He's close to 40 inches, I think. He has a well-check visit next week. He hasn't quite hit the 40lb mark in weight yet. He's still skinny. And picky as hell about food.

He says his favorite foods are: pepperoni pizza, Ramen noodles (lolz), waffles, chicken nuggets, sweet peppers and grapes.

He eats a handful more food items than that, but not much. I keep hoping this pickiness is just a stage. I'd hate for my kid to go off to college refusing to eat anything but pizza, Ramen and chicken nuggets. UGH. Although I guess he already does have the college kid diet down. *shrug* we are working on it.


School: 
He's reading at late-first grade reading level, according to his recent UPSTART preschool assessment.  Although his interests usually fall under math and science. At his regular preschool, he is a popular kid with the students and his teacher said he's kind and helpful. He's super excited to go to kindergarten next year.

Hobbies:
Jack loves playing outside, but he also has spent a good amount of time playing video games with his dad this winter. He loves Mario and Kirby the most. He's also a big Plants vs. Zombies fan. He also loves blocks, Lego's and anything magnetic. He has a few favorite shows on Netflix like Pokemon, WakFu and Voltron. He's definitely into various anime series, which is something he must get from his dad. Ha! Although I've been enjoying watching these shows with him. Beats the Paw Patrol and Dora I have to watch with Luna. lol.



Anxiety: 
I've mentioned this about Jack before, but the poor guy did inherit some of my mental struggles unfortunately. His anxiety is getting to a pretty debilitating point. In some ways, it's improved and he's developed better coping skills. In some scenarios he really struggles. He's terrified of being left alone in a room in our house for even a minute. He has full-blown panic attacks if he's unsure of where one us is, even if he knows we are in the house somewhere. It's difficult to even go to the bathroom without terrifying him. However, he's vastly improved with how he deals with going to school (loves it!) and if he goes to his cousin's house while I work until Daniel picks him up, he does really great. It's helpful that our cousins are amazing and live right next door. Ha!

I'm just grateful we've been able to identify and have his anxiety diagnosed at a young age so he can get the help and support he needs to cope. I recognize a lot of what he goes through as to similar issues I had when I was his age. I'm really optimistic that Jack is going to be just fine overcoming these struggles, and if he falters, he will have a strong support system at home.


Brother Jack:
As I said above, Jack is the best big brother. He loves Luna and she is in awe of him. She copies everything he does. They hang out all of the time and only once in a while have regular sibling squabbles. It's the best feeling in the world watching these babies of mine grow up together with such a strong bond. I'm so lucky to have them both and they are lucky to have each other.




Well that is the update I have for you all my sweet kid. I know you probably all see a lot less photos of him on social media now, but that is because he's always moving and isn't terribly cooperative for pics. But that is okay. I will take what I can get. Ha!

Being a mama is really hard. It's by far the hardest phase of my life thus far, but having this kid to parent, definitely makes it worth it. I underestimated how much I could love another person until this little human came along. He's definitely taught me more than I feel like I've taught him. I truly feel incredibly lucky to know him and to watch him learn and grow every day.


Happy, 5, sweet boy.

Hello, 2018. (A 2017 Year in Review)

Hi readers! (all five of you. :P)

Hope you all had a fun time ringing in the New Year. Unless you're my neighbors who insisted on screaming, yelling and doing a stupid amount of poppers for 5 hours straight until 1 a.m....then I hope one day you're blessed with a baby who doesn't sleep and and a toddler who thinks it's cool to wake up at 6 a.m.

Karma, sleep karma. I hope it's a real thing. Ha.

Moving on...

2017 was a pretty great year for the Sadlier family. Although it depends on who you ask. I personally loved it. For the world? 2017 was kind of shit and I'm not expecting 2018 to be much better. Unless a certain impeachment takes place, then SIGN ME UP.

Otherwise I'll just be focusing on what I can do to make a brighter world for my little family and hopefully some of those around me. I am the kind of person who really struggles with not absorbing the pain and negativity of what is going on around me. So I guess that is one of my resolutions this year...to focus on the positive. So you might see a little less of me on social media. I definitely have a tendency to get sucked into the negativity there. I need to make my mental health a priority this year as much as I can.

Other goals: going to work on my fitness. I am really horrible about working out. I have a few bodily injuries from sports in high school that make it difficult for me to do anything high impact, but I need to start getting a little busier and I'd love to -get more toned. I also plan to get back on a low-carb diet. It helped me so much in the past. As someone who suffers from PCOS, it's necessary for me to watch my diet a little more closely to keep the weight at bay.

Like I said, 2017 was kind of a mixed bag, but here are some of the highlights:

We welcomed a new floofer to the family. He's a little jerk most of the time, but he's MY jerk and I love his cuddly little face.

Jack turned 4!!

Luna turned 1!!

We bought a house.

Jack started Pre-School :)

Daniel turned 32 and continued to kick ass at his job!

I entered a new decade of life (hello, 30) and read 43 books, drank a lot of coffee and mommed so hard.

It was a good year. I feel so lucky to have my little family and am excited about what the next year is going to bring.

Lately!

Hey fam!

It's been an exciting few weeks. Basically we were sick all of November. No joke. All of us. Sick. A lot of times. Gah.

We finally got on the mend, but this last week the kids and I seem to have picked up another bug. This one hopefully just a little cold. So far much better than straight weeks of the Norovirus.

In addition to being sick, we actually have done some fun stuff lately, so I figured I'd catch everyone up here on the blog.

Thanksgiving:

For Thanksgiving, we had Dan's family come visit from Southern Utah and some of his sisters already live up in our area, so it was nice getting the whole family together. We did Thanksgiving dinner at Chuck A Rama buffet. At 11 a.m. HA. It was definitely a different kind of experience. I've never done Thanksgiving at a restaurant before and certainly never so early. I probably wouldn't do it again, but it was a good time! Jack got to eat pizza so he was pumped on that.

Jack sure loves his grammy and papa. :) 

The next day we all met over at Gardner Village to see the elves and all of the cute little shops. It was so cute and fun, and fortunately not too cold. It's been a very mild late fall up here. Although allegedly we're supposed to get snow soon.

This past weekend we paid a visit to the (helper) Santa. Jack never bought for a second that the Santa we saw was the real deal (despite that legit beard) so I admitted that the real Santa is at the North Pole and this guy is one of the helper Santas. I am not sure how much longer Jack has until he figures it out. He has a fantastic imagination, but is also very pragmatic. LOL.

We also went and paid a visit to my sister Nicki at her place in Park City. So beautiful up there despite the overwhelming lack of snow for this late in December. Mild year, I tell ya. Still, the kids had fun and I got to cuddle their new hairless cat. He's such a cute little guy.

So onto other stuff.

Update on Luna:

If you follow me on social media, you probably caught that Luna had to have a major dental surgery a couple weeks ago. She had her four top teeth capped. Her teeth are incredibly soft and she ground them down to basically nothing. It was really bad. The caps look great though and she's healing up perfectly! She will be 19 months in a couple days and I can't believe we are already heading toward her second birthday.

Update on Jack:

Speaking of birthdays, Jack reminds me regularly that he is turning 5 on March 9th and he is READY FOR IT. Me? Not so much. (My baby!!!)

Jack is doing great with school and reading. He loves going to preschool and is lukewarm on the preschool program (UPSTART) that he does daily, but it's helping him a lot and is a good chance for us to sit down and practice his new skills with him.

He did his school holiday program this week and it was SO CUTE. Nothing like preschoolers singing Christmas carols. Also, he made me a present at school and wrapped it himself. *Melt*

Update on Daniel: 

Work is going well for Daniel and last week we got to go to his company holiday dinner. It was a fun chance to get dressed up and out of the house sans children.

Update on me:

Just living that mom life, you know. Cleaning, doing laundry, hauling kids around, obsessing over politics and watching our country demolish itself before our eyes. You know, the usual.

I have a few projects in mind for this next year coming up; goals I've set and hope to accomplish. It's so easy to let motherhood consume you and I've definitely allowed that to happen the last couple years, especially since becoming a stay at home mom. I miss having a separate identity from my kids and family. I hope to bring some of me back this year.

For now, we are just on crunch time this final week before Christmas. We have family coming to visit and I am so excited to see everyone. Gotta kick this cold first and find a way to get ahead of the never-ending laundry game. Hope you all are having a great holiday season. Don't let it stress you out too much. Have a great week, everyone!

Dear Luna: 17 months

Watching this girl of mine grow and learn is such a magical experience. I feel so fortunate to get to do this a second time. She's totally her own little person now and is so full of personality and fun. She's smart and just the right amount of independent. She loves fiercely and has such a kindness for all things. Of course, I could sit here and brag on her all day.

It's just been a minute since I've gotten a chance to blog about my life and my kiddos. This move took a lot more out of me than I was expecting. In addition, my mental health has been a struggle but I think I'm getting a little bit more back on track with that too. Hoping to resume a more regularly scheduled blogging program around here. I miss writing.

So let's get to this update on Miss Lu, shall we?

PLAY

She walks.
She runs.
She chases puppies and knows all her animal noises. Her faves are reading about jungle animals and farm animals. The elephant is probably her favorite.

Real life, she loves dogs. And cats. We met a kitten at the pumpkin patch the other day and she was over the moon.

Her favorite things to do include playing on the slide at the park, going on walks in the wagon and following her big brother around and wanting to do everything he does.

She doesn't like to sit still for long. She'd rather run around and play. Luna isn't too into TV. Once in a while you'll catch her watching Team Umizoomi, Paw Patrol or Blaze or Nella the Princess Knight (thanks, Nick Jr.!) She was really obsessed with True and the Rainbow Kingdom on Netflix for a hot minute but someone (ME. It was me.) got pretty sick of watching that on repeat, so we've been avoiding Netflix. lol. Luna knows how to log on to my ipad, find Netflix, pick her own user and then locate the show she wants to watch. Kids these days, man. lol.

EAT

She is kinda picky but not nearly as bad as her brother. She likes most meats, some cheese, some fruits (as long as they aren't too messy), she really likes veggies. She likes crackers somewhat. Her favorite foods are probably grapes, turkey and anything with peanut butter. It's still a struggle to get her to eat a decent amount. Much like her brother, she is a grazer; a snacker. She doesn't like to sit still for long to eat. Too busy. She's still nursing. I know, *gasp!* shocker. How weird, right? lol. I'm practicing the "don't offer, don't refuse" method of weaning, but for the most part, I'm letting her decide when she's done. Luna really likes to drink water, but won't drink any other kind of milk or juice.

She's also been seen dipping her finger into my coffee for tastes now and again. lol.

SLEEP

Ugh. I'll be honest, It's been a rough couple months with sleep with this girl. She nurses a lot at night. She's tucked into my side the entire night and has been known to sleep directly on top of me. I don't mind her in my bed. The biggest struggle I'm having is that she won't stay asleep if I try and leave. No matter how sneaky I am, she always wakes up. This makes late-night Stranger Things viewings with my husband very difficult. I still have no regrets not doing CIO. It just doesn't work for us, but at the same time, I very much look forward to the day that she is sleeping well without me right by her side.

GROWTH

She's a big girl. It's been a while since we've had her weighed. But my scale says she's about 23.5 ;bs and she is 32 inches tall. I do know that her growth has slowed down substantially, which is normal now that she's walking. She fits in a variety of clothing. Some 12 month still. Mostly 18 months. I expected her to be bigger by now and got her a bunch of 2T clothes, but they are all too big. lol. Her feet are growing fast. She's outgrowing all her size 5 shoes. She still fits comfortably in size 4 diapers.

She's a chatter box. Not as much as her big bro, but girl still has plenty to say. Like I mentioned, she's got her animals down. She knows all her body parts and can point to them accordingly. She (like her brother was) is a fan of Team Umizoomi. I love the shiz out of that show for young kids. I swear, thanks to that show Jack was a little baby genius. Luna even was able to identify a circle (she said it like "kerkle" lol) today and triangle.


She is also starting to string words together in a sentence.

She says "what is it?" a lot. Or "Need this." She is also fond of telling the dogs to "lay down." Ha. Wonder where she's heard that before. :P

Yesterday she told me: "I did it! I did it!" when she threw away some garbage. Girl is a neat freak. ha. And later when I asked her where her daddy went she said, "Daddy not here!"

I think this big verbal leap might be to blame for the crap sleep as of late. Ha!

I seriously have so much fun with Luna. She's my little buddy. We are very rarely separated and I'm okay with that. These early days go by so quickly. I'm grateful I get to savor the time I have with her. She is so full of love for everyone. She loves her pups, her brother, her daddy, her grandparents, cousins. I'm so lucky to watch her enjoy life. I hope she can hold on to these traits as long as possible. This world is lacking in love, empathy and compassion. If my children can maintain these throughout their life, I hope to see the world a little bit better off for it.

I love you, my Luna. I am so grateful I get to be your mama.

Weekend Recap

Hey, folks!

How was your weekend? Not too shabby here! We had a good time with family and friends. I wanted to share a little weekend recap since I haven't done one in a while!

Saturday, we went with two of Daniel's sisters to get cookie dough treats at Sweet Dough in Orem and took the kiddos to the park.

Then Sunday Jack and I went on our first mommy-son movie outing! It was really fun to get to do that with him since he and I rarely get much one-on-one time together anymore. He and I both are big fans of the Ninjago show series so we thought it would be fun to get to go to the movie together in theater. We had a good time!

Sadly, woke up this morning to the horrific news that happened in Las Vegas last night. My kids are still too young to tell them that a madman terrorist decided to unleash so much hatred and evil upon a crowd, killing more than 50 people and injuring over 400 more. But I hate that this is the world they live in. I hate that this is the world we all live in. I wish I had the answers to fix it. All I can do is focus on teaching my kids to love and be kind. To treat others with respect. It's a scary world we live in. I'm grateful for my husband and my children and my sweet family. Hug your loved ones today. Make sure they know how much you love and appreciate them. Set aside resentment and anger and hold on to what matters. My love to all of you out there today.

           p.s. because of a weird glitch, a post of mine from a couple weeks ago went missing. Check out my life as a Dog Mom here!