A full week

We had a full week!  November certainly came in with a bang.  On Wednesday morning Clark had a wonderful visit with Grandma and Grandpa!  I didn't expect to leave him there long, but of course everything took longer than I thought so when I came to get him he was hungry.  Grandpa said he had literally just started fussing, and when I looked at my watch it had been exactly two hours since he had eaten! :)  So I fed him some green beans while Grandma made me lunch--wow!!!  It was sooo good.  After we got home Clark took a nice nap then I got some pictures of him:

this is a video from Tuesday:

Wednesday afternoon I did some cleaning and made pumpkin cookies.  I vacuumed while Clark was in the exersaucer and he gave me the funniest look when I turned on the vacuum.  Then he couldn't take his eyes off it!!  He was so worried!  Hahaha it was hilarious.  Anyway, after dinner Josh and I quick bathed Clark and tucked him into bed early because I was hosting Bible study!  It went really well and the cookies were a big hit (I didn't tell anyone they were from a mix and all I did was add water, butter and an egg!!...:).  Because the cookies were so tasty and super easy, I decided to sign-up to take some to church on Friday.  There were about fifteen men who volunteered to replace the church roof and various women of the church volunteered to provide breakfast, lunch, and snacks for them.  Kim and I also helped clean up on Saturday afternoon.  But anyway back to Thursday...

Thursday was a relaxing day at home for Clark and I.  He took great naps!  We went for a walk in the 60-degree weather--beautiful!  There is a lady at our church who had cancer surgery on Thursday so we prayed for her throughout the day.  It's cool how much praying you get done when there's literally nothing going on all day!  After Josh came home we had dinner and bathed Clark.  Because he had slept so long in the afternoon he wasn't tired enough for bedtime yet so he got to "stay up" and watch the Flyers game with Josh. :)  Meanwhile I went to a ladies' craft night at the church.  I didn't have a craft I was working on so I brought a RealSimple magazine (THE best magazine ever!!  I got a free one online and absolutely love it!  Check it out at realsimple.com).  It has wonderful ideas from cooking to entertaining to organization to fun tidbits like"9 uses for hairspray" and such.  I take my big highlighter and just circle things to look at again later.  So fun!  

Friday morning I made more pumpkin cookies while Clark took his morning nap.  After he woke up we drove over to the church and delivered them for the roofers.  Then we came back home for lunch and more naps.  During Clark's afternoon nap I straightened up the house, cleaned the kitchen, and started dinner.  We had Aunt Kim and Uncle Jon over for dinner!  It was so fun!  We are gradually easing back into entertaining people.  Clark is able to stay awake longer and that really helps.  He cooperated by taking a third nap so he was able to stay awake until 7:30 or 8pm.  The nice thing about entertaining on a Friday night is you have all day Saturday to do the dishes. :)  

Saturday morning I did just that: the dishes!  Then I did more cleaning around the house.  I like to clean our master bathroom when Josh is home because if Clark wakes up when I'm in the middle of it I lose steam and then don't feel like finishing!  Can anybody relate to that? :)  Saturday afternoon Josh took Clark for a walk while I was cleaning.  Then I went over to the church to help with the food clean-up.  The highlight of our week came at 5pm on Saturday.  Grandma and Grandpa hosted a "Newlywed Dinner" for my cousin Stephen and his wife Sara, my cousin Katie and her husband Mark, Aunt Kim and Uncle Jon, and Josh, Clark and me!  We ate on Grandma's china!!!  It was so so so nice!!  We had a roast with carrots that was cooked to absolute perfection--the roast literally melted in your mouth.  We had pumpkin bread, potatoes, corn, rolls, homemade jelly, two kinds of applesauce, and cole slaw.  I hope I didn't forget anything!  The dessert was apple pie al a mode and Sunday crunch!  aaaahhh it was sooooo good!!!  It was like Christmas!!  We just enjoyed it so much.  Grandma and Grandpa are so wonderful to watch Clark every week, and then to put on these dinners, it is just so wonderful!  We really really appreciate it.  There were two games as well--we guessed the amount of q-tips and cotton balls in a jar (Sara won with the guess of 100) and then a multiple-choice quiz on Autumn trivia!  It was very fun!  Katie and Mark entertained us with a rousing rendition of Johnny Cash's "Jackson" with Mark on the guitar/singing and Katie singing harmony.  Then Stephen played a couple hymns that he wrote.  It was such a lovely time!!!  And Clark made it all possible by behaving VERY well. :)  He even took a little nap on Grandma's bed!  We are just so thankful for grandparents who are so active in our lives and caring!  We know this is so unusual and we don't take it for granted!

Aunt Katelyn asked about Clark's sleep training so I'll give a little update:  It has been going very smoothly.  That said, he usually still wakes up around midnight-1:30am and Josh goes and soothes him back to sleep.  At some point we're going to have to keep that minimal--like instead of picking him up, just pop his paci, and see if we can slowly get him to skip waking up at that time.  He also wakes up around 3:45 or 4am for a feeding.  And this week he's also been waking up at 6 or 7am for a feeding.  There was one night when Josh soothed him back to sleep around midnight then he slept until 7am.  I woke up feeling great!!! :)  Anyway we have some "work" to do with those nighttime wake-ups.  During the day he has been doing well.  If he is totally exhausted (i.e. been awake for two hours or more) he will usually not cry when we put him down.  If I'm trying to "plan" his nap and he's not totally tired, he will cry.  If I've "planned" his naptime I will not let him cry super long (especially because I'm trying to plan his awake time!) so I will just go hold him or soothe him for about three minutes, then put him back down and he'll be fine.  In any case, I still don't let him cry past 30 minutes during the day--sometimes not past 20 minutes depending on how hard he's crying.  If it's been 20 minutes and he's really wailing, I can pretty much guarantee he won't be asleep 10 minutes later :)  If he's not actually crying, just talking and rolling around, then I definitely give it a full 30 minutes, and he's usually asleep by then.  Of course there are always exceptions.  That's the hardest part: being consistent during those "exceptional" days when I know he's had a hard day and my heart is saying "just hold him!" but I don't want to "unteach" him.  It's difficult but I believe God gives mothers an intuition for a reason so I usually go with my gut on those days. :)

Okay that's all for now!!  I'm going to try to update every day next week so it's not such a full post.  Also, I will be updating later today with a little "shout-out" for Annie's birthday today!! :)