Today, as we spent most of it at the Urgent Care trying to take care of this month long ear infection and pink eye outbreak, I realized that I was overwhelmed. I was tired. Heck, it's been a month (exactly) since I got a good night's rest. A month since I have had a puke free day. A month since I've done something for myself. And, in turn, it's been a month exactly, since my boys have truly been kids. They've been fever ridden, couch bound, in pain, crabby and tired. They have told me that their "ears are falling off" and that they are "just too tired out". So today, as we approached the third hour of the Urgent Care visit, the boys "sat" in the exam room as I waited on the phone with our provider trying to get approval for Theo to be seen. While I answered the redundant questions by the operator, the boys destroyed the room. Literally: they tore the paper off of the exam table, and not in one clean rip, about a million tiny pieces of...

Dear Theodor, Today is your birthday. When you're 18, you'll get a copy of all of your birthday letters, but for now, I write this to your two year old self. It probably won't mean much to you when you are 18, but it means a lot to me to write and remember all of your years. 2.5 months When I say "Happy Birthday" to you this year, I say it in disbelief. I cannot believe, even for a second, that you have been a part of this family for two years already. It feels like you have been a part of it since I met Daddio.  On the other hand, this has been the longest year of your life, at least on my end of things. You started your terrible twos at about 15 months and you've been going strong since. Not that you always throw tantrums, but that you are always doing things by yourself, challenging every word I say, and taking your own path in this great big world. June 2013 You are an explorer, you're up to any task, you are determined, you're bra...

It's not a secret, Theo is a hitter. He hits all the time. Sometimes it's because he gets upset or frustrated, sometimes it's just to hit. It is quite possibly the biggest thing that challenges me as a parent. I've read just about every article out there on how to stop this. I've put him in time out, and when I do that, we make eye contact and I made sure to tell him that he was in time out because he hit. Very straight forward, very to the point and sometimes, I add in how it makes me feel: sad or upset, frustrated etc. Sometimes he says sorry right away. Sometimes he just stares. Sometimes he just cracks this smile at me that makes my blood boil. I repeat myself over and over saying that hitting hurts, that it's not nice, that people won't want to play with you. I've purchased children's books about not hitting. I've pretended to cry when he hits me, I mean, this list just goes on and on. I've done everything. When time outs stopped w...

I've been a mother for three and a half years, and in that time, I've had two children, and have never left them for the night. Well, I guess that's not totally true. I've spent two nights away from Henrik while I gave birth to Theodor and stayed in the hospital, but I hardly call that a vacation or a "night away". Eric has been away from them, a lot actually. His job since we've had children has required over night shift work and travel, and my job has been to care for them while he was away and to provide some sort of stability in our life. I think, if we lived closer to family, I would have been ready to leave them much earlier, but as a nursing mom, it was difficult, and I just wasn't ready to have someone else, a baby sitter, stay with them over night. This Christmas, Eric and I gave each other the best gift: a night away! It had been much too long since we got to just be us, were able to forget about the kids, and be adults for more than a fe...