June 2014: A long-winded update

Here's a quick summary of things that have been going down in the Carmack house:

1. Adelyn is OBSESSED with dresses. Of course, her most fancy ones too...so she wears them to school, she wears them to bed, and she wants to wear them in the bath except I tell her that they will get wet and then she won't be able to wear them and then she will finally take off

2. We are in week 2 of potty training for Adelyn also. During the week it is awesome!! On the weekends, we have been going down to the cities, or to do things in Brainerd, and so we put her back in a pull-up...I don'[t know what else to do!! She falls asleep in the car and she would pee for sure if we didn't have a diaper on her...but overall, she's doing great and so far can decipher when she has "big girl underwear" on vs. a pull-up. 

3. Adelyn got a "big girl bed" this weekend and loves it...except she doesn't love to GO to bed in it by herself. All of a sudden, everything is "scary" (even though she never had a problem in her crib) and she just wants to continually get in and out of bed because...well...she can! So Michael and I have resorted to laying with her until she falls asleep which luckily has been about 7 minutes on average per night. I'll have to "wean" out of that eventually, but for now, it's what works for us. 

4. Both girls are in a sleep transition stage that we call, "damned if you do...damned if you don't". Adelyn is on the verge of giving up naps all together but still gets extremly crabby during the early evening when she doesn't nap. However, if she DOES nap, then she has a heck of a time falling asleep at night when we put her down (we can put her down at 8pm and she will be up in her room singing and talking until 10:30-11pm!!!). Damned if you do...damned if you don't.

Olivya is transitioning from 2 naps a day to one nap a day. When she has 2 naps a day, she won't go down until 9:30-10pm or so (when her bedtime is typically 7:30/8pm). When she has just 1 nap a day, she will go down right at 7, but from 5:30-7pm, it's melt-down central. One or two? I never know...damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

5. I never EVER thought I could be so darned busy in my life. Don't get me wrong, I love my job as a pastor to Children, Youth and Families, but in my setting I also do all the other pastoral duties (hospital visits, funerals, weddings, baptisms, home visits, preaching and leading worship, attend a bazillion meetings, etc.) and good gosh! I seriously never thought this job would ever be so busy. Basically I'm a youth director, children's minister, AND a pastor all at the same time. Im never caught up and could work 100 hours a week (I currently work 60-70 on average) and still never be totally caught up. Props to all those pastors that I had growing up whom I thought only worked on Sundays!!  Plus, having a spouse in ministry and trying to juggle our night and weekend schedules with also being parents and coordinating the girls' daycare and "school" schedules is just plain cray cray (that's crazy for those of you who don't hang out with teenagers day in and day out). Not that I'm making excuses, but that's why I (for the life of me!) can't keep up with this blog like I used to! Oh yeah - that and two very active and demanding children running around that need something every. minute. of the day!! (Luckily, they are pretty great kids that I love...)

6. I got in a pool day on one of my days off!!! yayyyy!!!

7. My nephew Brady graduated from 6th grade this week!!! He's off to Jr. High next year (whaaaatttttt? Crazy talk)

8. Misquitos have been crazy in our yard...so much so that we hired a professional company to come out and spray our yard all throughout the summer so that we can actually enjoy being outside (since our days to be outside in this state are very sacred!!). This is the first summer since having kids that we have actually had a descent yard to play in and man are we loving it!!! We are outside almost all day, every day and we can even leave the patio door open to the deck and the girls can go in and out when they want and we can see them out the window and sliding door of the kitchen (another small town perk to be able to let our kids play outside on their own if we have to run inside to switch laundry, etc....we just call out to whatever neighbor is outside at the time, "Can you keep an eye? I'm running inside" and the neighbors love it!).

And that, my friends....if life these days.