Recently in Parenting Category

Frustrated

I was supposed to volunteer at Anna's school this morning but the babysitter didn't show up. Sarah was really disappointed, too, because she really liked this sitter. She was supposed to come every-other-Thursday but it looks like I'm now looking for a new daytime sitter or possibly sending Henry to a one-day-a-week Mother's Day Out program if I can find one! Anna was also disappointed but Henry was probably glad that it was me that came to get him from his nap and not the sitter.

Build-a-Bear



He was napping during Build-a-Bear but he did get to eat some yummy grilled pineapple later!

Sarah has been working on six weeks of sleep charts since right around her birthday (about 13 weeks!). Her sleep rules have basically been to: STAY IN BED. She has been getting up in the middle of the night since we moved here and I grew tired of it pretty fast! At the end of each week she would get to go to the store and pick out a stuffed animal (Anna did, too, since she was following the sleep rules, too. Henry didn't care.). I told her from the start that at the end of the sixth week we'd go to Build-a-Bear (where she got her beloved Jacques the cat). Sarah & Henry got longhorns and Anna got a purple bear to go with her other purple bear. Let's hope there aren't too many interrupted nights from here on out.

Carousel


This is Henry's second carousel ride. I didn't have my camera last time. He loves it!


Her face doesn't show it here, but she loves it, too!


The original carousel-lover.

Sarah is having a hard time staying in bed all night long (right after we got Henry to sleep through the night!) so we are working on a reward system with her. She gets a sticker each morning she follows the Sleep Rules (stay in bed, stay very quiet, close your eyes, and go to sleep) and after she collects seven stickers she gets to pick out a new stuffed animal (she falls in love with one everywhere she goes). I have discovered that she needs a little incentive around day three or four though so last night she was told we would go on the carousel if she followed the rules and that got us through last night!

The Fall

Sarah jumped/fell from a platform on the playground last night and hurt herself. Craig didn't actually see how she landed but she had a bloody nose and was pretty upset. However she pulled herself together relatively quickly so we thought she was fine. When she went to stand/walk, her legs were super shaky and she said her legs hurt so we picked her up and kept her off her feet the rest of the night (we checked for anything that felt broken, bent her legs, etc.; it seemed only when she was standing that she complained).

This morning she didn't say her legs hurt but her right leg was pretty stiff when walking. Then she didn't want to walk to school with Anna and wanted the stroller. She didn't want to walk up the stairs, just to be carried. And she was crawling a bit on the playground at school. So, instead of going to my 28-week check-up this morning I took Sarah in to the pediatrician to let him check her out.

Sarah didn't complain when the doctor felt around her leg, but just said, "That guy is touching my leg!" (in an interested tone). The pediatrician drew a map on a post-it and said to go to the "bone doctor" down the street for an x-ray. I called Craig for assistance because I have a tendency to get flustered in these situations! I'm also glad I called him because I shouldn't be hanging out around x-ray machines right now anyway.

Sarah really didn't like getting her x-rays and I really didn't like sitting outside the door listening to her scream ("I want my skirt on!", "I want my shoes on!", "I'm ready to go home now!"). Knowing Craig was in there was comforting but I had to force myself to not run in, take her in my arms, and race away without looking back!

There is a small fracture on her right heel and we are to "keep an eye on her" this week and bring her back next week to make sure it looks better. I have been giving her Motrin but when I do, she walks more so I kind of don't want to give it to her to keep her off of her foot! She does not complain (verbally) that it hurts but still walks with a stiff leg and wants me to carry her and chooses stroller over walking almost every time. (She has been walking all throughout Okpo lately so this is very unusual for her!)

I guess it's pretty good that we made it over four years (and that Sarah made it two, I really would have predicted she'd do something like this before now!) without a "big" visit to the doctor. I'm not cut out for it, that's for sure!

Date Night

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Craig & I went to the driving range again for date night. We got there at 7:35 and they closed at 8 so Craig convinced the lady at the front desk to give us a two-for-one price. We might start doing date-night twice a month. Since we didn't spend as much time at the driving range as we had planned we decided to drive to Gohyeon and go to Starbucks instead of going to the local coffee house. While there we did a bit of shopping (I got the last super-stale baguette for French toast—really, Home Plus is not the place to buy bread—in the morning and we got a new side table for the family room to better store our laptops).

Daytime Babysitter

This morning and tomorrow morning I arranged for a babysitter so I could take portraits at Playschool. Anna doesn't usually go on Thursdays so she stayed home with Sarah and the sitter today but just Sarah will be with the sitter tomorrow. I specifically asked for an English-speaking sitter and Amelie was able to find someone. The girls were alive when I returned and neither were crying, but...

Sarah freaked out when I set her down or handed her to the sitter, as predicted. Anna was just shy, as the best-case-scenario-predicted. What actually happened after I left I don't know because when I got back at 11:45, Sarah was still sleeping (she is usually up by 10:30 at the latest) and Anna had locked herself in her room (she was singing to herself).

I asked the sitter multiple times if she put Sarah down at 9 AM as instructed and she claims she did. I don't know if Sarah cried for a very long time or what happened because she slept until 1 PM. (I didn't know what to do with her so I figured she was going to be messed-up sleep-wise no matter what I did, why not let her get as much sleep as she can.) Anna says she did play-doh and stickers with the sitter but she didn't get a snack. Because I said that the girls have a snack when Sarah wakes up from her nap (but Sarah didn't wake up from her nap!). But, Anna had a Capri-Sun (which I had said she could have with her snack, so why wasn't a snack distributed?) and Sarah had some soy milk (which I also talked about in relation to the snack)...

I have no idea how long Anna was in her room but I was surprised that the sitter hadn't picked up any toys that Sarah had (obviously) strewn about when she was awake. Anna said that she went to her room because she "wanted mommy to be here."

Anyway, maybe I'll get a better story out of the sitter tomorrow but I don't think I'll be calling on her again at this rate (she was also 10 minutes late getting here this morning).

All By Myself

I took the ferry to Busan this afternoon and did some shopping and relaxing all by myself. It was pretty awesome but the best part was that I hopped in a taxi and went to the airport to meet my mom. Craig had arranged for a driver to take us back to Geoje Island which worked out really well. Of course the only things I bought were for the kids but it was a nice break from my usual routine.

Date Night

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Craig & I went on our second date-night last night. This time we went to Mabin's here in Okpo. Steaks again and they were about equal-goodness to VIPS. This is closer so that is a plus. We went into town after dinner and had coffee and hot chocolate at Dunkin' Donuts. It feels very strange to me to be out with Craig without the girls since it happens so very rarely (I felt strange out on my hike, too). We didn't get Sung Hee again but her friend came and since the kids are in bed by the time we leave that's fine.

Making Friends

We had Anna's friend Eleni and her older brother Kostas over this afternoon to play. Anna stuck to me like glue but, thankfully, Sarah was a little more self-sufficient. At the end Anna did give Eleni a hug goodbye (Eleni gave Anna a kiss!). I just hope Anna gets more self-confidence as she gets older because it is going to be hard for her to be this shy when she is on her own in the world. Anna's friend Kristin is coming over tomorrow morning and Sarah & I might go up to one of our neighbor's houses next week for a playdate with kids her age (one is 3.5 months the other is 7.5 months) while Anna is at school.

One of my goals this year is to have friends over more for the kids since we really haven't been doing that at all since we've been here (especially since we're downstairs and don't "run into" people much when we do pass through the parking lot) . I guess it's hard for me to coordinate and we are all in our routines. Eleni & Kristin both have older siblings (so afternoons are harder) and Eleni & Gwenn both go to school five days per week (so mornings are out) which leaves little time for us to get together with more than one of her friends at a time, I guess. It's also hard because I just don't know many people with kids our kids age because I don't get out!

Anna talks about Kristin, Eleni, & Gwenn when I ask her about school and today I saw Gwenn, Kristin, & Anna all holding hands on their walk up to the playground (I've only seen Anna hold her teacher's hand on the way to the playground before). I would have loved to have gotten a picture of this but then Anna would have seen me and I had to run to the Import Lady and the bakery before I could get Anna & her things from school.

Date Night & Babysitting Mix-up

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I arranged for a babysitter (through Amelie again) for tonight. Sung-Hee was supposed to arrive at 7 PM and last time she came fifteen minutes early so when she wasn't here by 5 after 7 we realized something was wrong. Luckily I had saved her cell number in mine so I called her. She said she was babysitting somewhere else. I could only assume that somehow she got double-booked. So, she asked her friend to come here and it was all working out fine. (Sung-Hee and her friend are probably in their mid-forties.) We got upstairs after the new sitter arrived and there was someone who kind of looked like Sung-Hee in our parking lot on the phone. It turns out our reservation had been mixed up somewhere along the line and she had written down another apartment in our complex for 8 PM. So, Sung-Hee and her friend had a nice visit at our house while we went out.

All this to say that we have decided to try to go on a date night at least once per month and tonight we went to VIPS for dinner. The steaks were really good (I'm not sure if they were actually good or if we just haven't had steak in a long time!) and the salad bar had a good selection (even a taco bar!). Before we went to dinner we were talking about all of the different restaurants we were going to hit each month but when we were done we joked we might just go to VIPS each time. It's in Gohyeon (same building as Home Plus) so it's really not convenient to go during the week with the kids but we might try to brave the weekend crowd sometime for lunch.

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