Date with daddy

After a rocky start to the sticker chart Emmie has finally filled it up!!! Normally the sticker chart is an instant success but it took some time this time around to convince her that it was worth it to earn them. For her date she says she has decided to go on the carousel at the mall with daddy tonight.



















Here are a couple more pictures of the girls. The first picture I took I thought Allison was licking the floor but when I walked around to the other side I found out that her and Emmie were just taking turns playing with a little car. As you can see by how Emmie is laying on the floor she hasn't been feeling well. We took her to the doctor yesterday and it turns out she has an ear infection and her sinuses got all plug up and infected. Luckily already today she is on the mend, feeling much better and finally draining.

Still just hanging around

My poor girls' lives have been so boring lately! We have been spending a lot of time at home cleaning and organizing in preparation for this baby so we don't have very many pictures. The girls have been troopers with putting up with me while I have been scrubbing the house and sorting clothes and shredding papers and anything else that I have come up with to do during my crazy "nesting" stage.

Other than the boring cleaning and whatnot Emmie has had some days recently that I thought I needed to check her into the loony bin, or myself, because she has been being a little too much to handle at times and it has been tough on me this late in pregnancy. I think she is just going through a little bit of a defiant stage right now that she is testing the waters with attitude and sass to see what she can get away with. I have talked with a lot of people for advice and I have 3 books on hold at the library that will hopefully give me some ideas and good insight to dealing with this fun new stage that she's at. The last 2 days she has been an absolute dream but after having some days from hell (excuse me) I want to be prepared in case we revisit those kind of days again. I'll let ya know what I think of them after I get and read them so maybe down the line it can help someone else who might be dealing with a crazy drama queen, mood swinging, impulsive girl like mine! :)

Here are a couple pictures of the girls just hanging out.

Allison loves to sit at the table and color. The last picture of her with her duck lips cracks me up. She does this face at the dinner table all the time trying to get us to laugh at her while we're eating.


















































This first picture of Emmie I took while hiding behind the island in the kitchen. The story with it was that she asked if she could stir the noodles and I told her no because I couldn't come and help her right then since I had my hands full. Well then everything became quiet so I knew what she was going to do, go stir the noodles anyway. So I dropped my stuff and grabbed the camera to sneak up on her and when I took the picture she about flew through the roof because I scared her so bad. I was laughing so hard when I asked her if she was planning on stirring the noodles after I told her not to and she got all shy and said "no" and that's when I took the other picture. So to some people these look like ordinary pictures but to me they totally show my mischievous little girl.

Couple random things

Not anything too exciting going on but here are a couple pictures.

Here is Allison enjoying her new fetish, dumpster diving, YUCK! She loves to pull things up next to the trash can so she can climb up on them and start treasure hunting. Emmie used to love the trash can too but she loved to throw things away not rummage through it.


















This is totally what makes having girls so much fun... dress up!!! haha. This was Allison's first time joining in with Emmie and she just kept wanting more and more stuff added on to her. It was really cute watching Emmie help her get stuff on and telling her to dance around as they both laughed and had a good time.


















After Allison was all dolled up it made her want to love on everyone and start passing out the kisses.


















I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get Darren and Allison's lips locked but this picture's still cute because they were both saying "ah" after the kiss.


















We are revisiting the whole sticker thing again in our house. I have posted about them before being a lifesaver with Emmie and her little mood swings and so we are reimplementing them starting tomorrow! I need to just stay up on them so we don't fall back into the whole bad behavior thing but call me crazy for thinking a kid should be able to mind and be happy without them. I mean common really what do these kids have to be unhappy about, they play all day, someone else always bathes them and combs their hair, they always have their food made by someone else, someone to drive them around, and wipe their butts for crying out loud!!! haha Don't get me wrong, I love being a mom and think it's the greatest thing but some times I'm just at a loss of wondering what makes these kids tick.

So our new stick chart will be she can earn 3 stickers a day for good behavior by listening and being nice and once her sticker chart fills up, after roughly a week, she gets to go on a little date with either Darren or myself to do something like get ice cream or get a happy meal or spend a couple hours walking around the toy store playing around or get dressed up all nice and warm and head down to the park for a bit. Just little things that she gets to do every now and then anyway but we will set aside the time just for her and not have the whole family tag along. So here's to the start of another sticker adventure and hopefully a more cooperative girl.

How do you get to sleep?

Sadly I haven't really taken any pictures since Christmas so I don't have any to post.

I'm blogging for sleep help though. I have been having a horrible time trying to sleep this pregnancy and hate taking drugs so I'm looking for ideas of what people do when they can't sleep.

I have been reading a ton lately to try to get myself tired but it takes hours before I even start to feel a little groggy and then once I turn out the light I still toss and turn.

I've tried taking baths at night to get my body to relax but that makes me a little sleepy while I'm in the bath but the second I get out I'm wide awake.

Most days I don't drink caffeine but if I do it's a coke at lunch time so shouldn't really do anything to keep me from sleeping.

I have taken Tylenol PM a couple times but the last time I took it the next day I was so groggy and my head felt like I had been hit by a truck until after lunch and that wasn't cool.

I have tried breathing techniques to try to relax my body and mind and that hasn't done jack.

I'm not super stressed and don't stay up thinking about things most nights it's just that my mind and body won't relax and when I can fall asleep I can't stay asleep. I swear I can't remember a single night this pregnancy that I have slept all through the night. Sad huh!?!

So there's what has been going on so now what do you do when you can't sleep? I need some ideas!!! I'm at the point that I will try almost anything (except major sleep aids) I just can't seem to function during the day anymore and everything seems to be more difficult even when it's normal everyday things just because I can't focus.

I don't want this to seem like a downer post because really everything is good with my pregnancy and life in general at the Johnson home so I will try to take some pictures to post in the next couple days to make up for the lack of them in this one.