Welcome to the Peterson Family Website

It has been really hard to find time to get on here lately. Bennett likes a lot of attention. I'm not sure if Briony was like this, it doesn't seem like it, but maybe I feel like this because there are two of them and not just the one. I started Bennett on cereal almost two weeks ago. He is a messy eater. He wants to put his hands and fingers in mouth after each bite and then but his hands on his head and such. He grabs his bib and puts it in his mouth and that has food on it, so I'm not sure if wants to eat more faster or if he doesn't want to eat. I just don't know, but I can tell you it takes about 20 minutes to put down a few tablesponns. I keep telling him if want to get to the good stuff he needs to be able to eat the cereal, but he still doing his own thing.

Briony has basically potty trained herself. Her Grandma bought her big girl Fancy Nancy panties and she is preferring them over her Potty Patty training pants. He is even wearing big girl underwear to bed at night. It amazes me, she amazes me. It all just happened and it's tough to wrap my mind around that in about three months she will be three years old.

Once Steven forgets how tough Bennett has been the last month and I have gotten in range of my pre-pregnancy weight I will be praying very hard about one more healthy pregnancy and baby. Well, that is pending Bennett gets over his fussiness. LOL More will be revealed and we only want to live in God's will anyway.

We had Bennett's 4-month check up today. His ear infection is mostly cleared up and he is looking good. He weighed in at 17lbs, 8 oz (less than Bri at the same age) and is 26.3" long. That is the 90th and 89th percentile respectively.

I watched Briony dress herself today. She picked out her clothes and I added a long sleeve t-shirt to her outfit, but I let her wear it. I really wasn't that bad. She is in size 8 shoes now. It's weird how one day her shoes seem to fit and the next day they don't. She has trouble with her shirts and get's very frustrated with her socks and shoes and those are the things she takes on off the most.

Briony was supposed to go to Grammy and Papa's, but Papa called and said her was sick and needed to get rest. Bri ran into the room after nap proclaiming her plans to visit with them and I had to tell her she couldn't go because Papa was sick. She gave me her puppy dog eyes and said "Mom" with a quivering voice "I go to Grammy and Papas, see cousins." So I tried to explain again and she put on her best pout, started to cry and ran away. It was so darling I had to call Papa and have him talk to her, which she tried to tell him she was still coming over. So adorably heart breaking. Good thing Daddy is so much fun that he could help her get over it.

Bennett is doing great since starting his antibiotic. He is sleeping through the night and having longer stretches between meals. He seems happier. He does this cute big smile and then waits for a reaction, and does it again. I wonder if he is copying how we look right before we raspberry his belly. It's really funny, and he just laughs.

Briony is doing well with potty training. We haven't pushed it at all. As a matter of fact, I am afraid to take it to the next level. Underpants for bed and when we go out. She would probably be fine, I simply don't want to deal with the mess, if it all goes wrong. I'm such a chicken for additional work. I might get this matt for her car seat so if there is an accident I don't have to wash it out. I can just easily remove the pad that the catches everything. Hum, $12? Totally worth it.

Bennett has an ear infection. We took him in for a cough, which the Dr. said "no big deal" with that, but he needs to be on an antibiotic for 10 days. I brought him home and attempted to squirt it in his little cheek just like I would the Tylenol... and he spit it out all over his clothes. An ugly pink bubblegum color all over. Some days I feel like all I do is wash out clothes, poop, food, medicine. LOL

Today is the first day I noticed Briony did not eat her crust on her sandwich. She is finally eating like a toddler, not that she hasn't before it has been gradually getting worse since she turned two. She didn't like simple chicken, she will eat a strong flavored chicken. She won't eat most meats as of late and says she's full and all done and then begs for whatever her craving her is. She usually asks for "corn" which is popcorn, choc-o-late (totally adorable the way she says it), candy, chips... you know the deal. Toddler eating. It drives me nuts. The only way to get her to finish her veggies is to feed them to her and bribe her, but she always used to eat her crust. Huh. Oh, and of course she only eats the top of her pizza... that one blew me away because she liked to eat it like a big person only in super skinny toddler size strips.

Bennett has swollen gums and we are having trouble getting adjusted to a schedule with a big sister and outings and such. It really makes having a baby less tolerable. So I have been dedicated to attempting to be as scheduled as possible. I am also getting super tired of getting up in the middle of the night. I won't feed him but he won't go back to sleep unless he is getting everything else he wants. Ahhh! So tired. So very tired and the worst is, it doesn't matter that he doesn't have his own room because in the still of the night he is outrageously loud even at the far end of the house I am sure he will wake the dead and obviously the rest of the family. So I must bounce on the swiss ball until he asleep or if I am lucky I can glide in the rocker, but I can't put him down. Once I try that.... it's end game and wailing begins. Oh well, this can't last forever right? He is a very happy baby other than that. He smiles a ton and is very chatty for a boy. I suspected he wouldn't be so chatty.

Briony has been helping "make" things. She gets to mix when I bake or do anything in the kitchen that she can help with. She pulls a chair up to the counter and helps. The other night she pulled her chair up to the counter and poured out the salt and pepper shakers into a bowl that was on the counter. I figured I would let her play in it since she already emptied them and for a bit it was fun for her. Then she wiped her eye with pepper on her hand and ciaos ensued.

At first I was disappointed in myself for not having the fore thought that pepper would burn her eyes, but so would many things... pepper is bad, it is not my intention to repeat that one, but... I need to teach her not to put her hands by her eyes when she is playing in anything.

Today she pulled her chair up to the counter. I could hear something clink, while I was nursing Bennett. Sure enough I went into the kitchen to find her mixing the sugar and butter in a glass with a butter knife. I said "whatcha doin' Bri?" and she said "I'm makin' Mom". When I asked her what she was making she said "butter". S he also had the pepper. Lesson not learned yet.

Last night Briony asked for chocolate before bed. Steve used this as an opportunity to get out of the 20 minute bedtime routine that requires him to read books and then listen to Briony read the books and all the rest. He said she could have a piece of chocolate (peanut M&M) if they didn't read books and she promised to go right to sleep. So she agreed and then proceeded to speed read through four books always saving "How do Dinosaurs say goodnight" for last. He said his favorite was when she read Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb. She read the whole book "Dum ditty Dum ditty Dum Dum Dum" on every page. She also did go right to sleep after she got her chocolate so Steve was very pleased with the situation.

When we stopped in to check on her she was once again sideways in the bed. She flops around all over the bed. Sometime we find her completely turned upside down and sometime almost on the rail.

Yay! Bri has recovererd from her Daddy returning to work. She resumed her previous bed time routine and didn't cry all. We were both greatful for the easy transition from kid time to our time. Things are looking up, except Bri has not desire to potty any other time of the day except before bed. Also, she has started coughing overnight, it is a deep chest cough and Bennett couldn't breathe again this morning. So just like that we are dealing with colds again. Oh, and today Bennett will officially be in size three diapers because we used up all the size two.

From mid-Dec til just last week most of us had a cold. Bennett is still slightly congested. He is ready to move to size three diapers and is already filling out most of his 3-6 month outifts. He has even outgrown some of the hand-me-downs we were given.

Briony is randomly going potty like a big girl in her potty chair. She uses it almost every night before bed. (So we know she can go potty as a stall tactic.) The last two nights since Steve went back to work she has been a wreck to get to sleep.

I told Grammy I was going to document what I predict will be an aspect of Bennett's personality. Her response was "say it ain't so, hopefully this is just a phase." As much as we knew Bri would be a persistent gal, Ben is likely to have a quick fuse. His frustration level goes through the roof when things are working out as he likes. Okay, so this is only in regard to nursing, but the behavior is consistent lately. He gets bucky when he has to wait for a let down and then once it hits and he's getting spray, he gets mad. He crys so loud and hard that the only way to soothe him is to give him the pacifier and once the milk load eases put him back on. All I know is he is quickly frustrated and must be handled with care.

Another funny by Briony

The routine at the end of every time out is to ask her why she was in the time-out, tell her the correct behavior, get confirmation from her and finish with telling her she is a good girl and that we love her. A hug and kiss and she is on her way. However, for a day at the end of these little sessions she said "Thanks for the talk Mom".

That's my girl.

It is so amazing to me Briony and Bennett are almost the same size at their one week check-up. Bri was 8 lbs 15 1/2 oz and Ben was 8 lbs 14 oz, Bri was 21 " and Ben was 20" and their heads were both little, Bri at 13.3 and Ben at 13.8.

It occured to me I haven't smiled or laughed all day. Poor Briony. I feel terrible about that and I have spent the whole day correcting. Taking away crayons because she drew on the wall, telling her not to touch stuff. She didn't want to read stories and I won't let her watch any more t.v. It's a rough day for her.

I do have to take a minute to share how unique this kid is. At the hospital during her brief visit when she met the nurse she proceeded to introduce the nurse to her entire family. I didn't know two-year-olds could do that. Her other special thing is that she always tells people to have a good day when she says goodbye. She is big on goodbye's and it is so cute to watch. She says "give me my kiss" and then says good bye as she is leaving and finishes with "have a good day".

Steve said trick or treating with her was blast because she knew how to manuver to the front of the line and she would say... "give me candy" or "trick or treat" and then finish with a "thank you" He said she went crazy over people's dogs and walked into houses of some of the neighbors to see their dog. What a kid.

Briony is doing much better with gum chewing. I learned the trick is me asking her if she wants to spit it out after 15 minutes or so. That seems to work so she doesn't swallow it. (So maybe I'm a bit slow, it just didn't occur to me.)

I have determined she is severely sleep deprived. She meets four out of seven markers for sleep deprivation. In all my research on he topic what I couldn't find was the solution to getting a sleep deprived child to sleep. I know it should be obvious, but the struggle is actually implementing all the recommended healthy sleep habits and then still waiting two hours for her to fall asleep. Hopefully though, this will work, we did get her to sleep about an hour and half sooner than she had been since our return from the hospital. She actually got 10.5 hours overnight and hopefully we can a two hour nap in today.

Bennett is very vocal about messy and wet diapers. I felt horrible listening to him cry this morning. It was my first morning with the two kids alone. While making breakfast I dropped a plate and it shattered into pieces flying to the stairs and even little plate chips in the foyer. That is some serious distance.

Then I couldn't get the DVD player to play Bri's DVD of choice, so I decided to dump that old irritating player and utilize the player in our room. We haven't used it for us in over two years. (Since Briony)

Bennett was crying I still hadn't fed the dog, and just realized none of us have had our vitamins and I still need to clean the kitchen to mess it up again for lunch. I did however, sweep up all the plate mess and manage to dress and wash myself. Yay for me. But I better get to the next task because next thing I know; Bennett will want to eat int he middle of that.

One last thought, while in the middle of one of the most challenging parenting days of my new life, I have to ask myself, would I want another child? Is this too hard, are we happy, is it crazy to go through another c-section and disrupt our lives and have sore nipples for weeks on end and need to lose thirty pounds again? If there is anything I think I have been good at is is having realistic expectations of life with the arrival of a child. I have been pretty good at evaluating the difficulties and for seeing the challenges. Not that I have any special abilities or anything, I set just set the bar low and expect chaos. I think I could do this again. Hopefully Steven will want to.

Our third night of Bri not going to sleep until after 11:00. Daddy had to lay on the couch with her so she'd fall asleep. She still woke up at 2:00 am and came into our bed, which we don't mind if we could get her down to sleep in her bed. Now we are dealing with an overtired child to try and get back into a good sleep routine and she is at the doctors this very minute getting vaccinated for H1N1 so sleep will is an even higher priority for her health. Deep breath. All is well

On different note, she had gum for the first time on Oct 18th at the Peterson October birthday(s) party. She went through a few pieces before she caught on to not swallowing it. I was very skeptical and am in no rush for her to do anything beyond what I have already concluded her ready for, but non the less, she was given gum and the other day she came up to me and said "Mommy, can I have some gum?" "I won't swallow it." She sounded like such a big girl. So I gave her gum. Why not? Right. Maybe she had the hang of this gum chewing thing. Within five minutes the gum was gone. All I keep thinking is... please let her have swallowed it and it's not sticking somewhere that will be a disastrous mark of giving her come gum before she was ready.

Sounds like Bennett is waking. He is doing well. At his one week check-up he had regained his birth weight and added eight more ounces. Some things are easier recovering form this c-section and some things are harder being home with two. The only thing really driving me nuts is Bri dragging out 3 hours every night not going to bed.

I have to say I am glad we didn't go ahead with potty training. Our greatest issue with Briony has resurfaced since bringing Bennett home. She won't go down at night. She will fight it, cry, whine, anything but sleep and it went on until 11:00 last night and I finally gave in because I needed sleep. I keep hearing our Pediatricians voice saying "be more stubborn than your two-year-old" but when it comes to sleep.... that is one area I don't have the stamina to beat her. At least not at present.

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