Filling the Silence

Lucy's napping is still a bit erratic/non-existent, hence my absence. It's amazing how one little baby can suck up so much of your time! Lots to say, but no time to actually sit down and write a fully developed post on each idea. So, just to put something out there for the sake of updating (as I have been told by my grandmother that my blog stinks because I don't post enough), a few bullets:

- The last several days involved family, family and more family. Stacey and Cameron arrived on Friday. My brother Andrew, in the area for work, stopped by on Saturday afternoon for a bit. Kristin flew in Saturday night, Stacey and Cameron left Sunday morning, and I had Kristin and her BlackBerry for company until Tuesday afternoon (seriously, the girl works too much!). I must admit that once everyone was gone, the house seemed pretty quiet and lonely. I'm sure the rainy weather didn't help. I took some pictures, but better ones can be seen at Stacey's blog here. Her post is missing pics of Finn, though, so I will try to put up some recent ones soon.

- Stacey brought me the complete three seasons of Veronica Mars on DVD. I'm only 4 episodes in, and I'm already amazed that I somehow managed to miss this one when it was on the air. Fantastic show (and theme song)! I may have to re-watch with M. so that he can see it, too. Thanks to Stacey for filling some of my maternity leave TV boredom.

- I bought the Miracle Blanket because Lucy has been busting out of my swaddling jobs at night, and I think it's keeping her from sleeping longer stretches. The jury is still out on this one. Lucy seems to absolutely hate it - she fights against it constantly. But I did manage to get her to sleep the first night in it, and she slept one of her longest stretches yet. She will not nap in it (then again, she often just will not nap), and last night wasn't quite as successful - we couldn't get her to fall asleep until almost 11 pm (as opposed to her more typical 7:30/8:00-ish), and then she woke up again at 1:45. It may have been a $30 waste of money.

- M. is leaving for another work trip this coming Monday, and I've been slowly getting more and more anxious about it. Thankfully, we seem to have Lucy's reflux under control, so hopefully I won't have hours of crying from her while I'm on my own the way I did last time. But both kids have been going down for bed at around the same time, and I have no idea how to begin to come up with a plan to handle this by myself. Lucy often requires about an hour to get her down fully (change her, feed her, hold her upright a bit so she doesn't spit up all over the place, swaddle her, get her to fall asleep). Finn is high maintenance, too - he drags out story-time and bedtime singing to at least half an hour, and then he tends to have at least one (often more) episode of calling loudly for one of us to come rectify some trumped up problem or just cuddle with him before he'll fall asleep. And since his room is right next to Lucy's, we always give in and go up to him so that he won't wake his sister up. M. and I are usually both tied up with whatever kid we're in charge of each night for at least an hour. So my big problem is, which kid do I put down first, and what do I do with the other one in the meantime??? My head hurts just thinking about it.

- We tried switching Lucy to a generic version of her formula, because it's $11 cheaper per can. That could add up to crazy savings, right, since we go through over a can a week? Well, Lucy apparently has expensive tastes, because halfway through the switch she developed constipation and fussiness. So, we are back to the expensive name brand formula, and general brokeness :-).

- Speaking of brokeness, we don't actually know if we are, because M. and I are terrible at keeping a budget. With all the new expenses that come with adding kid #2 to the family (daycare, diapers, formula, reflux meds), we have no idea if what is coming in, income-wise, is greater than what is going out. So, we are going to take a stab (yet again) at keeping track of expenses/keeping a budget. Last time we tried this we used an Excel spreadsheet, and the downfall was that it was just too time consuming and detailed to maintain. I'm looking for something simpler this time, and I'd like to avoid software we have to buy (see above re: we may be broke). I'm planning on looking in to www.mint.com - anyone have experience with this site, or other recommendations?

That's enough of my jumbled thoughts for now!