I just had to share this picture of my sweet cupcake face….

Abbie is officially addicted to sweets. We wake up in the morning, and she is asking for chocolate, Lucky Charms (where she only eats the Charms), cupcakes, you name it. I am wondering if all the ice cream and chocolate I ate while pregnant with her has anything to do with it?

2-0

20 months! Wow, we are getting closer and closer to 2 and boy can we tell!! The terrible twos are quickly becoming the terrible 18-24 months for us, I am afraid! Abbie has always had quite the personality, but she is very defiant these days and says NO frequently, and No Ma’am. A little nicer, perhaps, but I don’t appreciate being told No Ma’am! So there has been some sitting in the corner, and getting down on her level to explain that we don’t act that way. She pitches a fit every now and then, sometimes she says OK Mommy real sweetly, then keeps doing whatever she’s not supposed to, and then other times she just stops. I am pretty sure all of this behavior is completely normal, but man, some days it really tests our patience. One thing I have been trying to enforce lately is something we actually learned in church a few weeks ago – “Delayed Disobedience”. Our pastor was referring to adults, and how we say “In a few weeks, I’ll start this diet” or “I’ll do this next week”. And he said he sees it with parents and their kids too. Like a Mom or Dad might say “Johnny, stop that”. "Johnny, if you don’t stop that I’m going to come over there”. "Johnny, this is your last chance, if you don’t stop that…” The whole point is that delayed disobedience is disobedience, plain and simple. If you don’t want your child doing something, you remove them immediately, and don’t give them the chance to continue at all.

A few little updates on some of my previous posts too – Abbie is still sleeping through the night, but she wakes up at 5:30 or 6 pretty much no matter what time she goes to sleep. So the earlier we put her to bed, the better. I still think she could (and should) sleep later, but I’m not going to worry too much about it. She is done nursing altogether. Since my last post, she has not nursed once. She has done so well with the weaning process that I just know this was the right time. I am thankful for that and also thankful that the crazy hormonal shift seems to be over- PHEW! I was crying at everything for a couple days there!!

Now on to my resolution post. The laundry thing is going pretty well. I still lose a few socks here and there, but I am getting to the bottom of my pile more and more these days.

And the shopping is going better too. I don’t think I am saving $$ when I go, but I am going less, like once a week instead of 3-4 times, which hopefully does save $$ overall. I am still going to be working on lots of other ways to save $$ this year too, and pay down some debt that we have. I am excited about this. Wes actually asked me who I was the other day, and what I had done w/ his wife.

And in baby news, wow, I have a lot of friends it seems that are pregnant right now, so I wanted to point you over to Emmy Staton’s blog if you want to take a look. http://babystaton.blogspot.com/ She is due in August, and she is a blog stalker (her words) and sorority sister of mine! Congrats Emmy! Her link is over on the sidebar.

Wednesday morning

Wednesday morning was the last time. How come my heart aches a little as I sit here and contemplate the end of this chapter? I thought it was what I wanted, and I still think ultimately it is. I’m talking about weaning Abbie completely from nursing, and we are on day 2. She did fine with it last night, thankfully, and tonight only asked twice. When I offered her milk instead, she was good to go. Wow. Really?

As aggravated as I get sometimes when all I want is for her to go back to sleep in the morning for a few minutes and “it” is all she wants to do, I know I will still miss this closeness. I think it is another sign of her growing up – that is one of the things I’ve been telling her too, that she is a big girl now and big girls drink milk out of cups (only). I always thought, before having her, that I would stop at 1 year, and be done, but she had other plans, and I guess I just went along with them. I have enjoyed most every minute of this bond we have shared, but now it’s time to let go. I pray that it will be replaced with another kind of closeness. I sort of remember feeling this way when we moved her back into her own bed at 10 months, after the relapse of letting her sleep with us during our move back east. So as we end this chapter, I know it’s just one of many, and the book is, by no means, over. It’s only just beginning, in fact.

New Year!

I’m gearing up for the New Year. Are you? I have two goals in my mind that I’d like to accomplish. Or maybe resolution is more the word here. Either way, I want to do two things in the upcoming year. And these two things are ones I believe I can actually accomplish.

1) Do my laundry and get to the bottom as much as possible. I did this the other day, and wow, what a feeling. It sounds unbelievable, but I rarely do this! I have noticed when Wes does laundry, he actually empties the basket almost every time. Since I do most of the laundry, however, I am giving myself this goal. Like I said, it was an amazing feeling. Here I have been doing laundry, one or two loads at a time, and then quitting and waiting a few more days for it to pile up. Well, no more of that. I need to finish what I start. I think this will help give me a sense of accomplishment!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

2) Spend less money and take less trips to the grocery store. You guys would not believe how much I’ve been spending if I told you. It’s an exorbitant (never used that word on here before!) amount. WAAAAYY too much for the three of us. I think my problem is I make frequent trips, like maybe 4 or 5 times a week, after work, and I go without a list. I spend $50-$60 during these trips, then come home and I may have only bought enough food for one meal, and then other “stuff”. For example, we cleaned out our refrigerator last week, and you know what I found? About 5 packages of shredded cheddar cheese, 4 jars of salsa, 10 bottles of salad dressing…. You get the picture. I guess I am a condiment freak! I was never really taught how to grocery shop, you see. So now, in order to save money and time and actually have food to fix for dinners (what a concept!) I am going to make a list each week, plan meals, and I think we (the Ledford family) will all be happier with it.

Now you might be reading this thinking, wow Shannon, these are some pretty shallow goals for the New Year - like shouldn't they be something like "Be a better Mom, be a better wife, etc?" Well honestly I think just by making small changes like this I'll be able to do better in those roles. I know they will both make Wes happier because we've talked about it. So those are my goals for the new year. What are yours? I'd love to hear!

Talkin'

Some of my favorite things Abbie is saying right now...

"I yike it" (yike = like)

"No, I don't yike it"

"I crazy, Mamma"

"Uncle B's silly"

"Hokie Pokie turn yourself around!"

"Rock a bye-baby, on the tree-pop" (top)

"Mamma, I go potty on the frog"

"I want make up, Mamma"

She comes out with some pretty funny stuff and lately is repeating everything we say!

Hope you all had a great Christmas. Here are some pics from ours!

Some days I wish...

That we could sell our house and move into a smaller place that we could afford without my income and I could stay home and raise our children (child right now, but yes, we want more) and life might be tough sometimes but we’d make it, right?

That’s how I felt today. My sweet little girl is on day 3 of some kind of yucky stomach bug and I just wanted to be there with her and hold her and let her know that it will be ok. I was able to stay home with her yesterday and it was wonderful but today, even though I knew she was in the very capable hands of her Daddy, I experienced being torn (not the first time) with working and staying home and the balance of it all. Sigh. Now I know what you might be thinking - it is what it is, and sometimes you get in a situation and you just have to be patient. And didn’t I have the chance to do just that a few months ago when I was let go from my job? Well, yea, but if we wanted to keep our home, I had to go back. Things might never be what I want. And honestly, sometimes I don’t know if I want to stay home full time. I do know that I’d like to have the option, to have some flexibility, and to say, at anytime, ok, I’m going home now to be with my kids. Life is unpredictable though and times are tough and who knows what could happen tomorrow. I know that I don’t want to look back on these times and wish I had done something different. I know that I truly must be content in whatever circumstances I am given. But more and more, I have the longing to be home and do what I think is the hardest job of them all.

BIG Sigh….

** I want to be sure you all know that I use this blog as an outlet for my thoughts, and not to have a pity party for myself and have whoever feeling sorry for me. I really don't want that. But I know there are others out there who share these same feelings with me. **

Is she not the sweetest thing you've ever seen??

Catching Up!

I have no idea what to blog about right now, mainly because it’s December and this time of year is just so crazy sometimes. If I had some extra vacation days like I usually do then I’d be good, I think. Maybe not. But I can’t complain. Things are going great and the biggest news of all is that Abbie is STILL SLEEPING fabulously! If you just read my blog and aren’t on Facebook, you may not even know that at all. But this has been going on for well over a week. So what finally made Abbie start sleeping through the night, you ask? Well, it took a little fussing on her part, and a little of me just holding my breath and telling myself that she was FINE. Literally, the kid would just yell, not even cry, Momma, Momma, over and over. The first night or two it might have been 5 minutes, but after that it was done. Now she goes right to sleep the second I leave the room, and she might wake up once a night for about 15 seconds. It’s way too short to count, I know that. She goes to sleep around 8, sometimes a few minutes before, and she has been gradually sleeping later and later. At first it was 5am. EARLY. Then it was 5:30. A little better. And this morning it was almost 6. Now that is more like it. 6 I can handle. Because during the week we like to spend time with the little peanut in the mornings before work. Phew. And I didn’t know what I was going to blog about. So anyways, that’s the big news. This weekend we are headed to Pigeon Forge to celebrate Christmas with some of my family, and we are very excited. Should be interesting to see how Abbie sleeps there, in a pack and play, with us in the same room, but maybe she’ll do ok.

Pictures have been few and far between, mainly because ever since I installed Norton 360 (antivirus software) on our computer, it won’t recognize my camera, and now even though I uninstalled it, it still won’t recognize it. So the only way for me to upload pics is with my SD card, which has way too many pictures on it. I’ve got to figure something out. But here are some recent family pics we had done w/ Sunday Grant – love her, go to her site - http://sundaygrantphotography.blogspot.com/ - if you want to see more of her work. I hope you are all having a fabulous Christmas season!!