This and That

B continues to enjoy school. Everyday the first thing he tells me is how many times he got to go on the playground. Today was their first "Library Day" and he got to check out a Spider-Man book. He was very excited. He continues to bring home smiley faces every day from his teacher and I learn one or two more names of classmates. Today the big news was that one of the girls had a bloody nose. Still not sure how that happened but did not appear to be caused from an accident.
J plays very nicely while B is at school but throughout the day will say "Go pick up B". He loves getting to play on the playground while we wait for the bell to ring. He is still taking really good naps but struggles falling asleep at bedtime. B now has the bedtime routine down and does not give us too many problems, but J does not seem to mind the spankings. They are both asleep most nights by 8 (and it is quiet usually around 7:30), so that is an improvement. They both seem to be getting into the habit of wanting to read by themselves a bit in bed too, which I happily welcome.
Whenever it gets really quiet in the house, I will call out to J and ask what he is doing. His usual response is "Just Looking", which can mean one of many things. Fortunately he has not figured out how to cover up his tracks yet, so I can usually figure out what he has been up to. I finally got all the toys in the house rounded up and sorted and put in the playroom closet and a lock on the closet door. Now, I control how many toys and what toys come out. It sure makes for a much neater, picked up playroom. No more tripping over toys and the power struggles of cleaning up a whole mess of toys. Now my next project is their bedroom closet and sorting all the winter/summer clothes and getting a lock on that too (to discourage the throwing every piece of clothing out until I find what I want or the 'I picked out cut off shorts for church and you told me to get my clothes and I don't want to change').
JB is doing well. Still sleeping a lot but is finding it hard to fall asleep for 'the night'. He usually will fuss around 8pm and requires some one on one. I recently came across a bottle of Gripe Water that I have had (it is Oil of Fennel) and can be used for gas, colic, etc. I tried it one night. He went from screaming and flailing to an instant calm and ready to tackle his pacifier. (I know the Gripe Water does not 'work' that fast, so assuming it is the taste that distracts him??) He is the first of my three to take to a pacifier so this is new territory for me. It is very soothing for him, but very irritating for me when he can't keep it in his mouth longer than 1 minute. He is starting to coo and even though I see him every day, I am amazed at how big he has gotten. He is starting to outgrow his 0-3 month clothes - seems he has a long torso. When I took him in for his month check up, the nurse practitioner was listening to his heart for a very long time. I started to get concerned when she finally piped up that he has the 'latino' blood. His heart was beating really fast and took him a while to settle down, although he certainly was not upset outwardly. The nurse and others have commented on how strong he is when he kicks or holds his head up. He knows he has two very active brothers he will need to keep up with.
I am just about ready to hit the gym again. Will wait until my 6 week check-up next week and then hopefully the weather will stay nice enough for some bike riding and I can figure out some gym time. We took a short hike over the weekend and did pretty well. Had to push JB in the stroller but we made good time.
JR is enjoying the new job. His boss is very accomodating and good to his employees. We have been a one car family for 2 weeks now (long story short, our trusty mechanic can't figure out the problem, then our mechanic, who works alone, fell and broke some ribs so was out of commission for a while....we hope to have everything fixed by end of this week) and getting everyone dressed and out of the house by 7am so we can take JR to the bus stop to catch the shuttle up the canyon has been challenging. I guess one nice thing is I don't ever have to worry about doing 'hair', unless you count J's long hair and curls.