Happy Halloween

Show me some tail!
Kensley was soooo excited to be a horse! Thank you Aunt Sandi for letting us borrow the costume.

Halloween was almost a bust. Kensley ran into Lois's tailgate about a half hour before the ward trunk-or-treat party and busted her lip. She spent a lot of time crying on the couch with a wash rag stuck in her mouth. It took a lot of convincing to get her to take it out because she was convinced she was still bleeding. Once I started getting everyone in their costumes she finally came around and got excited to go. She was very excited for all the treats, but refused to look anyone in the eye or say trick or treat. She was a big scaredy cat all night long. When we got home she immediately took an inventory of all the candy. I can't wait until bedtime so I can sneak a few pieces!

A Day In the Life....

This post is for you, Velika. :o) A "real" day in the not-so-exciting life of the Beals Family.

4:45 AM Pyper wakes up for a bottle. I am not complaining (too loudly) because she actually slept 8 hours! Woo Hoo! :o)

6:40 AM Stephen gets home from work and crawls into bed.

6:50 AM Kensley crawls into my bed and immediately starts kneading my hair as she goes back to sleep.

7:21 AM Pyper starts making awake noises and I start wondering if I can fit in a shower before she wakes up Stephen. After going back and forth for 5 minutes I realize it may be my only chance today and head for the shower.

7:43 AM I wake up Kensley. She usually has preschool at 12:15 PM, but because of parent/teacher conferences has school today at 8:15 AM, yuck!

7:44 AM Pyper starts yelling because we are ignoring her and she wants out of bed. I pick her up and she is soaking wet, again! I put her in Kensley's room while I get dressed and tell Kensley to hurry.

7:55 AM Get Pyper changed and dressed and help Kensley put shoes and socks on.

8:15 AM Right on time!

8:35 AM Feed Pyper some oatmeal while my stomach growls.

9:25 AM Just finished my breakfast of Captain Cruch cereal and fed Pyper a bottle...Confession: Formula has been killing us it is so expensive. So this week I started supplementing with whole milk even though she isn't a year old yet. I am hoping she will survive. She never really breastfed due to my not being able to nurse when she was born for two months. I pumped for 7 months and gave up. She did get some breast milk until she was 9 momths old.
Now I am treating myself to a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. Darn, only one left...oh well, no one else is around to fight me for it!

9:30 AM I guess I should do some cleaning...Bleh! Right after I change that stinky diaper!

10:15 AM Dishwasher and washing machine going, stove and table cleaned off. Now I am clipping coupons.

10:30 AM Put Pyper down for a nap and slap some make up on my face. Then I relax on the couch with a book until 11:00 when I have to leave to pick Kensley up from preschool.

12:00 PM Parent/Teacher conference with Kensley's teacher where it is confirmed that I am an awesome mom. :o) Just Kidding. They did say Kensley is doing very well. She plays well with others and doesn't fight or use bad words (Phew!) She shares and follows the routine and eats her lunch really well. She is ready for Kindergarten! Another confession: I told Kensley to put her shoes on for the conference but she didn't want to go. Stephen is home, but in bed. In a moment of bad judgement, I decide to let her stay home. I feed her lunch, lock the doors and tell her to wake up Dad if she needs anything and don't open the door. I was only gone for 30 minutes at the most and came home to her crying hysterically. She had hurt her finger and it was bleeding. She said "I guess you shouldn't leave me alone again." Well said. Please don't call social services!

1:40 PM Coupon shopping at Fry's. Bummed because they were out of a couple things I had coupons for to get free! :o( I did walk away with 2 free tubes of toothpaste and free liquid hand wash.

2:30 PM Stephen wakes up a couple hours earlier than usual and takes a shower and does homework until he has to leave for work at 5PM. I feed Pyper Pear & Pineapple baby food and she slurps it up.

4:00 PM Pyper takes a second nap after another bottle. I make a lunch for Stephen to take to work and then feed him dinner, or give him dinner that he then feeds to himself. I eat chips and salsa and share with Kensley.

5:15 PM Make dinner for Kensley, a hot dog IN a bun with ketchup and mustard. Pyper wakes up and we cuddle until Kensley finishes her dinner. Then we pack Pyper into a stroller and Kensley on her new bike with training wheels for a walk. Oops! A training wheel falls off so we trek back to the house for her scooter and are off again.

6:30 PM Back from our walk. I'm hungry and eat leftover chicken pot pie while Kensley watches Little Mermaid in her room and Pyper pulls canned food out of my cupboards. Pyper gets sweet potato and turkey baby food and some peas.

7:30 PM Kensley finishes Little Mermaid with Pyper while I fold the laundry I did earlier. They are being good so I leave them to play.

8:06 PM Read Kensley a bedtime story and say prayers. Bring Pyper downstairs with me.

8:32 PM Put Pyper in pj's, feed her a bottle, and put her in bed.

9:29 PM I am ALONE and typing this post while I eat my secret stash of Dark Chocolate Pomegranate bites. So delicious!

This is the only picture I managed to take today.

Oh darn! Pyper is screaming her head off....guess my day isn't over yet! See ya later!

10 Months - Oct 11

My little stinker, Pyper!

My BIG Stinker! If Pyper is getting a picture, Kensley needs one too!

Hail Storm and Then Some

Arizona got some weather action today! It was all very exciting. I needed to make a quick trip to the grocery store this afternoon and I told Stephen it would probably start raining the second I left. Sure enough! I walked out the door, saw lightning, and the rain started to fall. No big deal, I can take a little rain! Before I even got out of my complex it had started to hail and by the time I was a block away it was raining like crazy and I could only see about 10ft in front of me. I was trying to doubt my good sense when it started to rain even harder. Trees started falling, trash cans were in the middle of the road along with all kinds of debris and I had zero visibility. I was talking to Stephen and he told me not to pull over, but I couldn't see anything! I pulled into a gas station to get off the road to wait it out. During this time, the power went out again at our house. (It went out yesterday for a couple hours after a rainstorm). On my way home from the grocery store, Stephen called to say Kensley's school called for us to come pick her up. The school was out of power and the kids had got caught in the rain and were soaking wet. So, I just kept driving and picker her up. The classroom was like a sauna and the poor kids all looked like a bunch of drowned rats. Kensley was cold and not very happy. The teacher said she was fine at first, but I guess the fun aspect wore off!


Here is some of the aftermath around our complex.
After watching the news tonight, I realize we got off easy. There were power lines down everywhere, trees on top of cars, and heavy damage to cars.

The Facts

So, here is a picture of our life these days. Stephen finally got a job, thank heavens, that pays the bills and also gives us a little bit of wiggle room. A very little bit, but at least it is something. He is also going to school full-time and is pretty busy. He goes to school Monday from 7am-2pm and Wednesday and Friday from 7am-11am. He works Thursday-Saturday and every other Wednesday from 5:30pm-6am. Tuesday is his Saturday, meaning the only day he has nothing going on and pretty much the only day we see him. Usually he gets off work and either goes to school or comes home and goes straight to bed until he has to get up for work again. Sunday morning he stays awake until after church and usually crashes sometime late that afternoon or evening for the rest of the night. For the most part he gets about 8-9 hours of sleep a day except for Friday when he goes to school and only gets about 4-5 hours. The Wednesdays he works are a little tricky because he goes to school in the morning and then goes to work that evening. Usually he takes a "nap" before work. Sometime in between all this he has to find time for homework. He does have an hour break while he is at school as well. Now, here is my life. I am basically a single mom who gets to stay home with her kids. I don't get a lot of sleep because Pyper has decided she doesn't want to sleep through the night anymore. She gets up a minimum of once a night, usually twice and sometimes more than that. We have our good nights, but mostly we have not-so-good nights these days. Kensley goes to bed easily and usually crawls into bed with me around 6 or 7 and shortly after that Pyper is up for the day. I pretty much have the tasks that most stay-at-home mom's have like getting everyone dressed, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, cleaning, laundry, getting Kensley to and from school, grocery shopping and other errands, making Stephen his lunch whenever he has to leave, paying the bills and balancing the budget, etc. I will just stay that I am not always doing a very stellar job at all my jobs and just leave it at that. Everyone gets fed and the bills get paid. I also try really hard to let Stephen sleep when he needs to without as much interruption as possible and have something for him to eat when he wakes up and his lunch ready to take to work since he is usually running out the door.
Now, let me tell you about last night and yesterday. Friday night Pyper didn't sleep very well and I was up by about 6:30 am for the day with about 5 total hours of sleep. Stephen got home from work yesterday morning and went to bed and slept 9 hours. He got up and went to work. Kensley took a late nap, I don't think she was feeling well, and it made for a late bedtime. Pyper refused to go down for the night and I finally got her to sleep about 9:30, about an hour past normal bedtime. By the time I finally got ready for bed and Kensley was in bed, Pyper woke up crying. I picked her up, put her back to sleep and then went to bed. She kept waking up about every 20-30 minutes and I fed her a bottle about 1 am. At the moment I am getting ready to lay her down again, I hear Kensley start crying and becoming a little hysterical which is never good. I hurry out of the room as she is running to the bathroom and promptly throws up. She spends about 10 minutes throwing up, shaking, throwing up some more. When she seems to slow down I get her to lay down in her bed and she immediately jumps up to throw up again. By this time her stomach is basically empty so it is mostly dry heaving and some gross stuff. I lay her down again with a bowl by her bed. I know, gross. She won't let me leave her so I spend the next couple hours laying scrunched up next to her in the toddler bed while she falls asleep and wakes up about every 10-15 minutes to dry heave again. I finally get so uncomfortable that I lay on the floor next to the bed until 6 am with her dry heaving until at least 5 am. Thank heavens Pyper slept through all of this and didn't wake up until six. I fed her another bottle and put her back to bed. I got in my own bed and Kensley came and crawled in next to me. We finally drift off to sleep and at 6:45 am Stephen comes in to go to bed. I tell him about my night and he says sorry and goes to sleep. So, here is the question: when we have both not slept all night and me going on 24 hrs of no sleep, how do you decide who gets to sleep and who has to get up and take care of kids? I am sure you already know what happened in this house....