30 days

I'm not sure how, but my actively trying to get Will to stop being nocturnal has...actually...made it worse. He now sleeps more during the day and less during the night. How'd that happen?? I have no idea! But I sure am sleepy, and I can't tell you how good it felt to start today with a hot shower that didn't include a baby crying during it or a toddler wandering around calling "mommy, where are you??"

A hot shower was especially good after a chilly yesterday. Bill woke up at 4 AM to go to work, and his alarm of course woke the baby, Katie, and me. So the two hours I had gotten prior to 4 AM came in handy, since those were the only hours I ended up getting all night. I took turns getting one child to sleep after the other, and when one would finally fall asleep, the other would wake up. I didn't budge us from bed until about 10 AM, because I was just too tired to start my day before then. However, when we finally opened the door of our space heater warm bedroom, I realized we were stepping out into a house frozen over. It felt very nearly like stepping outside! (which, at the current time, it had been snowing outside so it was quite cold!) I ran downstairs to try to fix the heat, but it wouldn't kick on. I assumed our oil had run out, and there was nothing much I could do about it until Bill came home. I took the kids back into the bedroom and dressed them in warm clothes. Will got a sleeper under a warm ducky sleep sack and one of his hats. Katie got in a set of fuzzy princess footie pjs, and I put on a sweater. I took them downstairs, then grabbed the two space heaters we had and a few blankets. I also turned on the oven, kept the door to it open and locked the gate between the kitchen and living room so we could get some of it's heat without any danger. We ended up having a cuddly, sleepy, pajama day full of tv shows and warm foods like oatmeal and soup with grilled cheese. When Bill came home late in the afternoon, he spent two hours trying to get ahold of the oil company. By 8 PM, an emergency oil guy came to the house to give us a few gallons of oil until a truck could make it to us on Monday.

After he left, we all ran to the store to do grocery shopping. Bill is currently working 6 and 7 days a week, alternating weeks so that he works 13 days in a row, has one day off and then works another 13 days. This means we had to do our grocery shopping on Saturday night, because there was no time to do it again until next Saturday! It was amazing to return home to warm house!

Bill, as well as me, is very split between being grateful for the overtime so we can catch up with our debt that we made from having three weeks of paternity off, and sad that he's not home. He's been soaking up every minute he can with us when he's not at work, especially because Katie still asks for him all day and won't let him out of her sight when he's home. Even if he runs upstairs to go to the bathroom, she calls for him and tries to go after him. He became her best friend over those three weeks, and now she feels deprived of him! He also says that it seems like Will changes so much each day. Every time he comes home, Will looks a little chubbier, seems a little more alert, his abilities grow stronger, or he has more smiles. The overtime though is a great way to start the year. Now that we have no cell phones and no car payment, we're no longer going into the negatives every month like we were. The overtime, once we pay off the debt from the paternity leave, will really help to go towards our loans. Hopefully, if the overtime keeps up and we can dedicate our tax return and bonus to it as well, we can really get a good chunk of the loan paid off this year. Every year we pray that we'll be able to take out a lot of our loans, but only little crumbs come out instead. This year we took the initiative to do more and get more serious about it and it's really looking good. One of Bill's smartest moves was to tell me that once we get the loans paid off, we can finally go on another Disney cruise. That's all I needed! I said to cancel the cell phones, I stopped complaining about overtime, agreed to only go out to eat once a month, and I started to be really strict with the grocery budget so that we never go over and we hopefully have money saved at the end of the money. Really, he should have said something years ago! LOL!

This week I'm getting more adventurous with cooking again. Previously, we've been living mostly on frozen foods or food that can be prepared in under ten minutes, just to make it easier on me. This week, I went on pinterest and found two or three new recipes I was confident that I could handle this week, and only got one frozen meal for emergencies when we're low on time. I'm actually quite happy that I'm able to do so much lately. I'm keeping up with the house better now than I was since I first got pregnant with Will. The dishes are always kept up with, the bathroom gets cleaned out often, the front rooms get picked up about three times a day. I've been vacuuming at least once a day the entire downstairs and the staircase. I'm managing mostly to keep up with my internet jobs. It just feels so good to be in charge of my house again and run it the way I like to! I think it's also frustration with having to still wait to exercise. I can't stand waiting, and I'm really pumped up to start in two weeks! I just hope that I'm still this energetic and eager when the time comes!

Before my shower this morning, I weighed myself again. I'm down to 134 lbs. The progress is SO slow, but it IS progress!