Projects and Cranky Babies

What a week! And we're only halfway through!

My sweet, sweet husband volunteered himself to tear down and reconstruct a fence at my aunt's house along with patching some sheetrock, fixing a leak in the roof, patching the ceiling, and finding out what is causing the wall behind her washer to mold. She lives about 1.5 hours north of us so needless to say, he has been VERY busy and gone quite a bit this week.

In the meantime, Elliott has decided that 4 months is the perfect age to start the teething process. Poor baby. It is taking SO much longer for the first tooth to break through that it did for Jackson. Elliott is such a happy baby in most circumstances, but he just looks miserable at the moment. He has zero interest in chewing on anything cold and the baby Orajel does not seem to help at all either. He prefers his chubby little fingers and sitting in my lap over anything else. The only silver lining for him is that he's so tired from lack of napping during the day that he is sleeping REALLY well at night.

Jackson has been a trooper. He is used to me being able to read "The Very Cranky Bear" (or Kinky Bear, as he likes to call him) whenever the mood strikes him, but Elliott has had other plans. Jack just takes it in stride and finds something to entertain himself until Elliott nods off for a 10 min power nap. Then, he runs over with as many books as he can carry and we read them on rotation until Elliott needs me again. Other favorites at the moment include "Corduroy Goes To The Doctor," "Corduroy's Day," "Ten Little Puppies," and "How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Room?" I have all of those memorized, but he's not fooled at all. Even if he is holding the book and I'm saying the words, it's not going to work. He MUST be seated in my lap and able to turn the pages at the appropriate time. I am thinking / hoping we have about worn "Ten Little Puppies" out at this point. We get to "7 little puppies skiing in the snow..." and he will close the book and say, "THE END! NIGHT PUPPIES, NIGHT NIGHT!" which works for me! It has to be his idea, however. I tried skipping from 8 to 3 and he totally caught on to what I was doing.

I have concluded that the only way I can keep my energy going is to stay as active as possible from the time I wake up until it's time for bed. Today this consisted of making breakfast, cleaning the kitchen, reorganizing the pantry, doing 3 loads of laundry, cleaning the living room, cleaning Jackson's room, cleaning our bedroom, sprucing up the guest bathroom, sewing 3 throw pillows for Jackson's room, attaching the ribbons to 10 panels of fabric, attaching ribbons to a scarf, sewing 16 triangles for a pinterest project, making a meatloaf for dinner, and cutting up 4 pairs of Pete's jeans into 6x6 squares for my next project. Oh, and taking care of the boys, OF COURSE. I also tried something I had saved to one of my pinterest boards which was cleaning all of the fruit in my fridge with a vinager and water soak. The berries did great, but the apples were left with this powdery looking white substance that WILL NOT come off. I must have missed a step somewhere.

I have no idea what we're doing tomorrow. I think I feel like taking a nap at some point.