Today was uneventful. The girls slept in today, and since Zoey still has a bit of a cold we thought we better stay home from church. So, the kids played and watched some movies and the day went fairly smooth.

Hadley and I did have a few chats about being a “nasty, naughty little girl.” She has been yelling and giving us attitude lately. She says things like, “fine, I don’t care about that right now” and “Yes, I CAN!!!” whenever she is told no. We had some discussions that saying those things make people think that she is a nasty and naughty little girl and we don’t want people to think that since she is a nice, sweet, caring little girl. It seemed to go over well tonight, but tomorrow I am sure will be a new day.

Zoey is still not sleeping well, and it is starting to wear on me. I am not sure what to do about it yet, and I have just been praying that it improves. She did wake up Hadley last night, and Hadley jumped right out of bed. I asked what she was doing and she said, “going upstairs to sleep with daddy.” I was too tired to stop her. That problem will resolve itself when Zoey stops getting up in the night, so I am not too worried about it.

It was an overall good day, and tomorrow we are back to the same old routine.

After Thanksgiving, we stayed an extra night at Grandma’s house. We were quite close to coming home early, since Hadley decided to wig out for several hours yesterday. But, alas, we survived and today is another day.

Hadley woke me up at 6 and let me know she’d had an accident. It’s the first time she’s had an overnight accident, but she had fallen asleep during that movie last night, so she never really had the opportunity to go before bed.

It wasn’t a big deal, but I did get a good laugh. As I was helping Hadley change out of her wet clothes, she said to take off her britches. Well, Grandma calls them britches. Hadley on the other hand, wasn’t even beginning to pronounce the “r”. So, after a few minutes of trying to figure out why Hadley was swearing at me, we got her cleaned up and she went to play with Grandma and I went back to bed.

Linds and Zoey got up and then Hadley came running and screaming into the room and jumping on me to wake me up. It was lovely.

We just spent the morning relaxing. It was quite nice.

Hadley said that she wanted us to get into the hot tub before we left, so despite the fact that it was snowing, I took her out there. Papa joined us and we had a great time.

Zoey Belle found that she enjoys pulling herself up on the glass table and gnawing on the edge. She is getting fast and is going to be a strong climber. Time to start baby-proofing the house.

The girls slept on the way home, so when we arrived, they were ready to go. Linds got out the Christmas decorations and Hadley helped decorate. She and I then went outside to see if the outside lights were still working. The ones in the back were not, so I took them out of the tree while Hadley dug around in the garden. We then turned the front lights on and Hadley said she was cold and ready to go inside.

We ate and early supper, took baths and then watched a movie on TV as a family. Hadley got to have some popcorn, so she was a happy camper.

We put Hadley to bed and she only got up 3 or 4 hundred times. Most of the times were due to the large amount of monsters that apparently have taken up residence in her room. After an hour or 2, she fell asleep.

Zoey Belle, on the other hand, was not going to go to sleep. Ever.

She fell asleep on Linds for about an hour, and then woke up and refused to sleep until around 10. At least she wasn’t being crabby. She was just awake and ready to play.

Finally, both girls were asleep, for the time being and Lindsey and I watched a movie, preparing for the fact that we would probably be seeing our lovely children in just a short time.

After a great Thanksgiving, we decided to spend some time at Grandma and Papa’s house.

Zoey was great and really enjoyed just crawling around and playing with toys.

Hadley helped out by making Monkey Bread (or Snowman Balls, as she likes to call them). Despite the large amount of sugar on the floor, they tasted good, so we will call it a success.

She also got to do her favorite farm chore of feeding the kitties.

When it was time for Husker football, the girls headed upstairs and let the kids play while they started making cookies. Hadley decided to get in on the action and was making lots of trees, candy canes, snowmen and stars. She really enjoys helping Linds bake.

Grandma then put on a movie for her and eventually she fell asleep on the floor watching it. I took her down to her Elmo bed and she never even woke up.

Zoey Belle actually slept fantastically last night, so we are crossing our fingers for another good night of sleep for her.

What a wonderful day.

We headed to Lincoln around 10am and Hadley was excited to see the kids. We were almost to Barb and Nolan’s when Hadley announced she was going to be shy. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Zoey Belle was immediately swooped up by the family and I knew odds were good I wouldn’t see her again until it was time to leave. She is a little congested, but I think she’ll be fine considering the amount of attention she’ll be getting.

Hadley, while refusing to talk to the kids, immediately went downstairs to play with Katherine. They seemed to be having a good time and Katherine was being really helpful and doing a great job of deciphering Hadley’s words.

To be honest, we ate lunch and then played football in the afternoon while the girls had Erin’s baby shower. All I know is that both girls were still in one piece and smiling when I returned, so they must’ve had a good time.

Hadley really enjoyed playing in the backyard with the kids. She and Katherine turned over a rock to reveal centipedes and slugs, both of which Hadley wanted to play with. Madeline tried to teach Hadley how to do cartwheels, but I don’t think we are quite there yet.

Before it was time to leave, Tristin held Zoey Belle for about 40 minutes and she seemed pretty content. Hadley and the Schmit kids gave hugs for about the same duration of time. The girls had a wonderful day, thanks to the energy of their cousins.

After we were done at Barb and Nolan’s, we heading to Grandma and Papa’s house to spend the night. Zoey has been sleeping poorly lately, so it could be interesting.

Last night was one of the worst nights in the history of sleepless nights.

Zoey Belle was crying out for and Linds tried to get her to sleep for hours. I think they eventually passed out around 2.

Hadley then got up at 4 something because “the Firefighters were making too much noises”. I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what that meant, but they she told me she was also being chased by a giraffe. Ok, thank goodness, she was dreaming.

Zoey continued her velociraptor screeches every half hour or so, just to make sure we hadn’t completely fallen asleep.

Hadley continued her up and down for about 2 hours until I finally put her on the couch and I slept on the other end.

I woke up with 5 minutes to get to work, just as Linds and Zoey were waking up. Needless to say, Lindsey was going to have a long day.

Hadley was her usual bi-polar self. Well, that’s how she gets when she is tired. She is either really really happy or exploding.

We had a good lunch and the afternoon didn’t go too bad.

I got home and Hadley, Zoey and I played in the girls’ room until supper. We all ate and everyone had a nice time. We’ve decided that Hadley is going to have a serious tv/movie cutback. She is not only obsessed with movies, but loses her mind when you tell her she can’t watch them. It’s time to nip this one in the bud.

The whole family spent the rest of the evening sitting in the office. The girls played on the floor for awhile and then I held Zoey while Lindsey and Hadley read books. Bedtime came and despite Hadley crying and saying she didn’t want to go to bed, she went down easily and fell asleep even quicker.

ZB stayed up for awhile and I just held her on my lap for an hour or so. It was nice bonding time with the cute little squirt.

Lindsey has now zonked out on the couch and I’m about to drag her up to bed so I can do the same.

We went to church this morning. Everything was fairly normal.

Afterward, Hadley kept climbing over the pews. I told her not to twice.

She didn’t listen and ended up doing a backflip off the pew, hitting her head on the seat and then doing a frontflip to bellyflop on the floor.

She’s fine.

We got home and had sandwiches with Gerry. Hadley was pretty excited because I got her her own little bag of Cheetos.

At nap time, Linds took Hadley to Wal-Mart to get groceries and I stayed back with ZB while she took a nap. I layed down on the couch, hoping to get a quick snooze in. I got exactly what I wanted. Zoey slept for about 20 minutes.

When the girls got back, we finished watching Thumbelina with Hadley, which was just terrible. I mean, Hadley has some movies that I don’t prefer, but I don’t know if I can take Thumbelina anymore.

I’m also going to attack Christopher Robin at some point since Zoey decided to play with a singing Winnie the Pooh book for the majority of the day. Note to the family, please don’t buy the girls things that sing for Christmas. Those songs get stuck in my head for days.

Come bedtime, Hadley decided that she would prefer to not.

It’s now 9 and after an hour and a half, I think she might be asleep. ZB is eating a DVD case on the floor next to me, so hopefully she will pass out soon as well.

Short work week this week and we are all looking forward to enjoying time with the whole family.

About 5am, Hadley crawled into bed with us. I was too tired to care.

She slept in until about 845, so that was good. Lindsey was already downstairs and had been up with Zoey Belle for awhile.

Mid-morning, Lindsey took Zoey into the girls’ room to do some major cleaning / reorganizing and I took Hadley out to the garage for some of the same.

Here is a picture of all the stuffed animals that started out in their room. It was sorted out to just one lonely basket full.

We moved everything out of the garage, filled the trash can and reorganized it all so that the car can fit this winter. Hadley was a good helper. She played in the dirt, moved her toys around, but did give me the step stool when I needed it.

I’m told that Zoey sat perfectly in her crib the entire time Linds was working on their room. That kid is pretty much either sleeping or smiling. I love it.

After lunch, Hadley and I took a nap on the couch. Well, she watched a movie while I napped. ZB slept for over two hours, so that was good, too.

Hadley and I then took a ton of stuff to recycling, ran some errands and filled up the tires in the car. The whole family was having a pretty productive day.

After supper, the girls had baths. Lindsey was spiking Zoey’s hair up all crazy. She looked so cute and was loving the attention. Hadley refused to get out of the bath until all the water had drained out and was shaking from being so cold.

Hadley only got up once from bed tonight. She cried for a few minutes, but fell asleep quickly. Zoey fell asleep in Lindsey’s arms, but then I held her on the couch for about a half and hour. Linds then went to take her into the crib. The cats have decided that they now sleep there.

Zoey Belle went to sleep alone, but a short while later, Dignan found his way into her crib and is now sleeping at her feet. I think he’s protective of the girls. They both love the cats a ton.

Hey, we had a good day. That’s two in a row and counting. Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday, so it should be a good time with the family.

Hadley also continues to take an interest in what she wears. Here is a beautiful picture of her pajamas that she wore all day long, with her winter boots. She just finished eating her lasagna so forgive her messy face.

Today was a pretty good day.

Nothing really special happened, but the girls were well behaved, work went fine and we got to spend some family time together tonight.

Linds took the girls grocery shopping this morning and she said that Hadley was great. She even got a special treat, those crappy candy bracelets. After eating 1.5, she decided that she didn’t like them any more. Classic.

Zoey Belle was a lot of fun for me today. We spent a lot of time cuddling and tickling. I love tickling Zoey Belle and making her laugh really hard. It’s also important to note that Lindsey, myself and several other people have noted how difficult it is to keep from biting ZB’s cheeks. Just looking at her, you really want to just bite them. She’s one cute kid.

Gerry brought lasagna over for supper and then we all hung out and watched part of Meet the Robinsons. Well, actually, Hadley jumped and climbed all over me. That’s ok, I think I like her attention as much as she likes mine.

When it was bedtime, Hadley went to bed perfectly. She didn’t take a nap, so she must’ve been tired. Zoey eventually tuckered out in Linds’ arms and went down without a hitch. It’s been several hours and we haven’t heard a peep out of either of them.

Hopefully this isn’t the calm before the storm. Good thing is we have no plans for this weekend, so worse-comes-worse, we’ll just sit around the house and try to survive another day.

I’m writing this a day late, so of course, my memory of yesterday has almost completely faded.

One thing I did want to point out is how stinkin cute Hadley is.

She went to bed and then was up moments later with a request. Eventually we got her to stay in bed. Then Zoey Belle started crying. Hadley got up to let us know. Then ZB stopped. Hadley came out to let us know that Zoey was still crying.

This continued for awhile, each time with Hadley running back and hopping into bed, all while wearing her flowered footy pjs.

Finally, she came out with her toy flamingo. I told her she needed to stay in bed or daddy was going to take her flamingo away. She thought about it for a second, then handed me the flamingo and stated, “Ok, daddy, you take the flamingo and I’ll just stay out here.”

She’s officially too smart for her own good.

She did go to sleep and both girls were still passed out when I left for work at 815.

Last night wasn’t too bad. Well, let me explain.

Hadley woke up in the middle of the night. That woke Zoey up. Linds got up with Zoey while I put Hadley down. At some point in time Hadley crawled into bed and I woke up this morning to find her taking up 90% of a king sized bed. But other than that, it wasn’t too bad.

Lindsey and the girls spent the day continuing to get the house cleaned up and organized. It was really nice out, so they walked me back to work after lunch time. Zoey Belle took a nap and Linds was going to keep Hadley up, but eventually Hadley was passed out on the couch. She is definitely stuck between the needing / not needing a nap phase.

When I got home, we all sat in the girls’ room and Linds and Hadley went through the 7 million stuffed animals. Hadley had to decide whether she wanted to keep each animal in her room, in storage or give it away. Surprisingly, we got rid of quite a few animals. I’m just not sure Hadley knew what “give them away” actually meant.

After that it was dinner, baths and church. Hadley did great and was really excited to go to class. She said she had a fun time. Zoey Belle was tired, but well behaved.

After church, Hadley, Dawson and Makai were running circles around me. I told them to make sure they all ran in the same direction, but like usual, Hadley did the opposite and ended up running face-to-face with Makai. And we have our first bloody nose. It wasn’t too graphic, but I’ll count it.

We came home, despite Hadley’s pleas to stay with the boys and got ready for bed. I told Hadley she could watch a few minutes of a movie while we cuddled and she picked Monsters Inc. Now, Hadley has been having a lot of monster issues in her room at night, so I was already skeptical about letting her continue to watch this movie. We got to the part where a monster walks into a room and she lost it. That movie is going into the basement for a good period of time. We have too many other good movies that don’t scare the crap out of her that she can watch instead.

Hadley got up 3 or 4 thousand times from bed with every excuse in the book. Eventually she fell asleep, as did ZB and now we just have to see how night #2 treats us. If it’s anything like last night, I’ll be waking up with little heels digging into my back.

Tonight’s a big night. We’ve moved the girls into one room.

For the past 7.5 months, I’ve had my office in the living room and Zoey Belle in her own room. Today we decided it was time to put the girls together. Part of it was due to getting a truckload of stuff from the folks and needing a place to put it all. Another part is me wanting an office back.

Hadley was very excited about sharing her room. She kept saying over and over, “I’ll sleep in my bed and Zoey Belle will sleep in her crib!”

When it was time for bed, we told Hadley to quietly lay down and that we would bring in Zoey once she had fallen asleep. Hadley was not happy.

She wanted Zoey Belle in her room right now. After some coaxing and only a few tries, Hadley had passed out and Zoey was asleep in Lindsey’s arms. She went into the room, layed Zoey down and BOOM!, immediate crying.

Hadley didn’t flinch.

Zoey Belle came out and I played with her for awhile until she finally was ready to sleep again.

Linds went in for try number 2 and everything was good to go.

All bouts of crying have left Hadley completely unmoved, so we are hoping that both girls will make it through the night and we might get some sleep as well.

We’ll see how that actually works.

Sorry for the lapse in posting. It seems like one day becomes two and so on and so forth until it’s been a week.

The girls have been up and down.

Last weekend we went to Grandma and Papa Eckert’s house. Everyone had a good time. Hadley behaved well, minus when she didn’t sleep the entire weekend and got really crabby. Overall, though, it was a lot of fun.

Papa took the girls’ photos for Christmas. They both did great and seemed to have a good time. We had to bribe Hadley with Whoppers, but hey, it got the job done and we have some fantastic pics of both girls. We will be posting some of them once we get the xmas card done for this year.

The week went by fast and wasn’t too terrible. Zoey Belle is an army-crawling machine. She still doesn’t use her knees too much, but that hasn’t caused her any trouble. She loves taking DVDs off the shelf, so that is fun. Soon she’ll be standing up and destroying the house. Excellent.

Hadley has had a lot of trouble going to bed lately. I’m not sure what the cause is. She acts tired, but once she’s in bed, there is little to nothing that will keep her in there. She really wants the cats, especially Dignan, to sleep with her in bed. He’ll lay in there for awhile, but then leaves and she wigs out. Then she’ll come out and have to go to the bathroom. Another difficult thing to deal with since we really want her to keep doing a great job with potty training, but hate having an excuse to get out of bed.

Really, it hasn’t been that big of a deal, because she at least goes every time so we don’t feel quite so manipulated.

Hadley has also taken a liking to screaming and stomping her foot. Oh, and this great arm-cross. She’ll grunt, yell, stomp and then fold her arms. She then says things like, “I’m frustrated” or “I am very angry right now!”. It’s hard not to laugh, but once she does it for awhile, it becomes easier.

The girls really seem to be growing up fast. Zoey Belle will be crawling and pulling herself up any day and Hadley gets smarter and smarter by the second.

Despite the hardships, we are so blessed to have two wonderful girls. They are the best and I wouldn’t change them for the world.

~Eric

The past two days have had Hadley in non stop mental breakdown mode. It has been rough to say the least. Today, instead of taking a nap, she decided to be loud and wake up Zoey. So, not only did Hadley have a chip on her shoulder, and no sleep, now Zoey was in the same boat.

Ethan and Finn came over to play for a while and it was all going fine until Hadley decided she HAD TO HAVE the balloon he brought over. This created a massive meltdown and it carried on until it was time for the boys to leave. Finally, I got Zoey down to rest, even though it was after 5pm. I just didn’t care, the poor girl needed sleep. Then I finally got Hadley under control and cuddled with her on the couch where we watched a movie and we both ended up falling asleep.

All three of us didn’t wake up until almost 7pm. We didn’t have supper ready, so we ended up eating sandwiches. We missed Church, but considering the past two days, I wasn’t going to be too hard on myself for that. Thankfully, the day is almost over, and tomorrow we will start fresh.

Zoey did get to spend some quality time with daddy when he came home during the day.
No matter how tired she is, she loves to sit with her daddy.

Apparently Hadley is not done being sick. Last night I went over to the Schwarz’ and when I got home, Eric said Hadley had puked again. Then as soon as she woke up this morning she got sick once more. I am really hoping that this little bug works its way out, because I don’t know how much more cleaning I can do. Thankfully, we are still having beautiful weather, so I opened up a ton of windows to air out the house. I have also been disinfecting the doorknobs, light switches and anything else Hadley might have touched (so pretty much everything.)

We also found out Hadley apparently knows her letters. My T-shirt says “Awesome” across it and Hadley looked at it and said, “this is an M.” We then asked her what all the letters were, and she knew all of them except the W. We have not worked with her on letters, so it is pretty crazy that she would know them. I think she probably knew from watching “Word World” or “Super Why.” Which are the only two shows that I really want her watching.

Zoey is struggling with this time change and I am going to have to let her cry it out a little bit during nap times I think. She is not sleeping well, and that lack of sleep is catching up with me.

Eric got home from work and took the girls outside to enjoy the last bit of daylight before supper time. We will probably try to do as much as we can outside in the next week because the weather will most likely get nasty soon after.

I am not a fan of the daylight savings time change. The girls are off schedule and that wrecks havoc on their behavior.

Luckily it was a beautiful day today so we were able to get outside and do some work in our garden. We needed to get all the old stuff out so we will have an easier time next year, but that was no easy task. Zoey took a nap inside with Eric and Hadley and I got to work. Dawson also stopped by and helped us, and that was very nice.

When Zoey woke up she came outside for a brief photo shoot with Eric and Hadley and I jumped in too. The best pictures always happen when they are unplanned.

Hadley pretty much partied until she puked. She seemed fine this morning, but mid afternoon she told Eric her tummy hurt. He assumed she ate too much candy and told her just to chill for a bit. When she was supposed to be taking a nap, she started crying and calling for mommy. I went to check on her and she had vomited all over her bed. She said, “I tried to keep the puke in my mouth but I couldn’t.”
So sad…

She continued to be ill for the remainder of the afternoon. Zoey worked on crawling/lunging. She doesn’t get up on her knees yet to move, but she can army crawl pretty well.