Category: Breastfeeding

The Funnest Life = Park Life

Ariana Sullivan

The second the weather warmed up we started going to the park every single day. If it’s warm, we’re at the park! There are 4 really nice parks within a 7 minute drive of where we live! And most of that 7 minutes, for the furthest away park, is spent just waiting at traffic lights! The distance isn’t far, all are 2 miles away or less and it’s super awesome because living in an apartment means we don’t have a backyard so we use all the wonderful parks around here as our outdoor space. I set up the trunk of my car with outdoor toys (tennis rackets and balls, water guns, horse shoes, frisbees, kites, sand toys, etc) so any time we feel like playing outside we just drive right over to the parks! I store the toys in cheap pop up laundry hampers from WalMart.

It is so amazing to live in the city we live in while we have to live in an apartment! I feel lucky every day to be able to have a cozy home and everything we miss in a house and neighborhood be within biking distance. Heck, we could even walk to this park I’m blogging about today if we needed to.

I carry our collapsible drinking cups with us, too. Sometimes I bring water with us and we also use the water fountains at the parks. (That link is an Amazon affiliate link)

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Brooklyn doesn’t love this particular park so she wasn’t there, we went while she was still in school. She has school for three hours after we pick up Sierra from school since Sierra has half days.

I think all the kids’ swimwear in this post is from Costco and Target. Maybe all from Costco.

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We found a cool dragonfly on the playground and took pictures and then realized that one of its wings looked bent and we worried it was too injured to survive. I hope it was fine 🙁

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This park has a fun splash pad and also a cool sand pit the kids love.

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Need. More. Water!

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Also Costco has decently affordable bathrobes for kids and I bought some and they’re AWESOME! If you have little kids, especially 5 and younger, bathrobes are so much easier to use than regular towels since the kids can walk around in them drying off before you head back to your car! Payson and Ember had robes, too, but they were in the dirty clothes that day.279efbblog282efbblog

Group picture before we left.

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So I took off Lyla’s wet clothes for the drive home and she was so hyper while I was loading our supplies and the stroller into the van. She was seriously SO happy and full of energy. She loves sitting in the front seat.

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I had been wearing Ember’s hat while unloading stuff, wanting to put it in last so it wouldn’t get squished.

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And then of course Lyla insisted on breastfeeding before leaving.

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Good Morning!

Ariana Sullivan

 
I got Lyla to sleep later in the day. Look at my BOOBS!!! Lyla is so vicious when she breastfeeds and tears my skin apart!! She also pinches and slaps and bites holes in my nipples all the time! I don’t blog daily so I never mention these things (I do on facebook) but it’s a nonstop injury fest over here 🙁


 
And a package came so I passed her off to Sierra while I brought the stuff in. They looked so cute together!

 
Exciting mail! Inside were our family picture clothes!

The sunset was beautiful that night.


 
We went shopping.

 
This was the next day, I had the kids try on their clothes. Good thing I bought these all early because some of the items were HUGE!

My Lens Came Back!

Ariana Sullivan

So my camera lens broke and I was naturally devastated and it took me months to decide to send it off for repair. It was painful to pay $400 for that repair. Ugh.
This was the day I dropped it off at FedEx and it went on its way to California! (The shipping alone was $47!! OWWW)

 
And this was a few weeks later when it finally came back!


 
I didn’t have a chance to try it out because I have kids. haha

 
We went to Office Max.

 
We checked the mail once we got home and I snapped some pictures of Brooklyn and Sierra for fun.


 
And then we went grocery shopping!

Another Sick Day

Ariana Sullivan

Hanging with my baby girls in the morning.


 
The only way on earth I can meet any of the needs I have to meet every day. ERGO LOVE.

 
I guess not sleeping for days and days and holding a baby 24/7 does a number on your body. My shoulder/neck area got so hurt I could barely move. I made a rice heat pack out of a sock and kept it on my shoulder.

 
Lyla was so cranky and I was so sore I finally gave up on making lunch and took the kids to McDonald’s instead. I was hoping the drive would put Lyla to sleep but it didn’t.

 
The kids were excited about their happy meals because the toys were from the ninjago movie and pretty fun!


 
Lyla wanted my lens cap and wanted to put it on my camera.


 
Why is McDonald’s so yummy?


 
One of Ember’s chicken nuggets was a two-for-one stuck together mutant nugget!


 
Lyla got a hold of Payson’s apple juice and was happily trying to drink from it (it was empty though) and that was a nice tiny break for me!




 
But then it was back to wanting mama and mama’s boobs!


 
I was trying ice for the pain since the heat didn’t work earlier.

The kids were playing on the ipad.


 
I realized it had been three days of that high fever and that it had broke and remembered that when Ember had baby measles as a baby she’d had that pattern and this was the day spots would appear if Lyla had baby measles so I checked and sure enough:


 
And here is Everett just being a cool dude.

Life with Sick Lyla

Ariana Sullivan

Laundry in the morning. I washed the new clothes we got from Costco!


 
Made breakfast while she fell asleep in the ergo.


 
Got Everett dressed while Lyla still napped.


 
She woke up and played at the window.


 
I had a snack.


 
Then we went outside.


 
Here are some of Allan’s pumpkins.


 
And unfortunately the corn died during an early freeze we had.

 
Everett loved looking at the veggies Allan and the other kids pulled.

 
Here he is happily showing off his playdoh. This kid LOVES playdoh!

 
There were some spiders and ladybugs on some of the vegetables!


 
The people who worked hard that day!

 
Poor Everett begs me to hold him all the time and I’m almost always holding Lyla instead. Since I was wearing her I could pick him up and he was really happy about that!


 
I’d noticed that Lyla was warm all day and took her temperature with a new thermometer since the kids broke my old one.

 
I tried it on myself first and she was happy when I did it on her next 🙂


 
With her slightly sick I didn’t want to go to the store but we were ouuuuut of food and needed to. Everett was extremely excited to go to WalMart for some reason! 🙂


 
That night I was up late with Lyla who was really cranky. I snapped these pictures before finally heading to bed.


 
It wasn’t long before I woke up… Lyla tossed and turned and cried and cried. I finally got up to just walk with her and rock her. She was burning up so I took her temperature again. It was 103. I don’t usually give my babies tylenol or motrin for fevers because I am a believer in letting fevers run their course but she was not sleeping at all and I knew that she’d get better faster if she could sleep more so I attempted to give her baby tylenol. Problem is Lyla throws up everything (even many foods!), when she gags on new tastes and sure enough- one drop of tylenol hit her tongue and she immediately projectile vomited!! Oh but it didn’t stop there! I had set off her barf alarm and she threw up twice more! She throws up so so so much when she doesn’t like a taste! I’d JUST nursed her for like five hours straight too so she was full of milk and there was a whooooole lot of vomit. Luckily it was mostly milk so it wasn’t really gross but unluckily it got all over her and me and the bed which meant baths for her and me and an entire load of bedding laundry!!
 
The GOOD news is her nighttime bath cooled her down significantly and she was able to sleep much better. So from 3am until 7am or so she slept decently well. She tossed and turned and I didn’t sleep much but she didn’t cry much and she got some good sleep.



 
Here’s a problem I ran into. I bought two new thermometers and they each give me totally different temperatures each time! The one below seems to be closest since it matches our regular body temperatures when we’re not sick so I use that to go by.

Uno

Ariana Sullivan

Everett has decided that climbing up on the TV stand all day every day is his favorite thing to do. I tell him to climb down every single time and he does. And then immediately climbs back up. There is no controlling a 3 year old!


 
Me and the kids played Uno.

 
Lyla did what she does always… ruins everything we do. haha!
She had fun though.


 
Notice her tears? Payson had taken cards from her that she was wrinkling up and that made her sad.


 
Sierra won the first game!

 
I’ve been looking into things to use to cosleep with Lyla in because sleeping on the bed is unsafe (she rolls off) and I tried this toddler tent. It worked okay except that it was uncomfortable for me because I didn’t fit!
I let the kids play in the tent since I don’t use it for sleeping.


 
Ember won the second game!


 
Brooklyn won the third game!

 
Payson won the fourth game!

 
And Brooklyn won the fifth game!

 
I asked Ember for a high five and when she held her hand up I jokingly said, “Hey, why are you showing five? You didn’t win the fifth game, Brooklyn did!”

 
So then the kids all goofed off holding up fingers about games they’d won.

 
The kids ask me so often to take dozens and dozens of pictures of them being silly and doing funny faces. We have hundreds and hundreds. I usually don’t post them but here are a few.

 
I spent a full hour putting Lyla to sleep for a nap. But then she slept for 45 minutes!


 
I didn’t take any more pictures today until bedtime. In the next picture Ember is picking out our nightly bedtime books on the kindle app. She picked mostly Berenstain Bears books tonight 🙂

Going to Toys R Us to Spend Brooklyn’s Birthday Money!

Ariana Sullivan

Brooklyn wanted to go to Toys R Us to spend her birthday money. She was hopeful she’d find some fun Trolls toys!
 
I almost never wear lipstick so Lyla was really intrigued by my bright lips that day!

 
Brooklyn found so many toys she liked!! She had a hard time narrowing it down. Good problem to have, huh?

 
Payson LOVES the Smurfs and especially Grouchy Smurf. He pretends to be Grouchy Smurf all the time!

 
My kids have always loved giant plush toys. They would love if I bought one but I can’t make myself do it. A GIANT, uncleanable toy?? Just no. haha


 
They love to play with them in stores, though, and it always makes me stop and consider buying one.

 
Laughing at mom 🙂

 
Brooklyn with what she chose to spend her money on!

 
We stopped at a nature trail on the way home.


 
She turns 14 TOMORROW!!!