Sorry about not posting yesterday. I suppose it's all right, but I do like to have something to say every day. I can go on and on about stuff sometimes. I really enjoy writing. Some day I'd like to write a book about my life... it could be interesting, lol. I always enjoyed reading books about people's lives. I began the full time nursing of Alex yesterday. I was nursing her full time before, except that I would give her a bottle of formula here and there, usually with cereal to fatten her up. I forget if I mentioned that she only gained 12 ounces of weight between December and Feb, which isn't a lot. Though she's sooo long. LOL... long. Tall, long, what's the difference? So anyway, she was sleeping 11-12 hours a night, and all the experts I was talking to said that's too much. I figured as much. They said she should be waking 3-4 times a night to eat. GAH. I nursed her from 12-1:30, 5:30-7:30, 10-10:30ish... that kid does NOT know when to get OFF the breast! She just enjoys it SO much. I did put her in her cradle instead of keeping her with me all night, but I had to wake her up for the 5:30 feeding, and she just lays there sucking, and she doesn't go to sleep, just dozes. I've got her down for a nap now, just hoping she's fallen asleep. I'm trying to get pictures together for a frame to put up on the wall, it's not an easy task because I haven't done it since 2002, just after Shabree was born, so I've got quite a few years to do. Finding the best pictures and weeding them down to the ones I absolutely want to print is really hard, because I've just got thousands upon thousands of them. This year alone, I'm sure I already have at least a few hundred, because I take some every single day practically. I think the most time that's gone by between picture taking is a week, and that's a long time for me to go. Just this morning, I was taking pictures of our little Valentine's Day celebration (happy Valentine's day everyone!!!!) The pictures are in backwards order from how they were taken. That's all right. I just couldn't choose, so I uploaded a bunch of pictures. They're SO cute. I don't look forward to the day when I have to start taking pictures down because I have exceeded my bandwidth limit. I'll have to post messages that if you want those pictures, get them now, or you won't get them at all. But I have a gigabyte, so it'll be a bit (though not if I upload 15 pictures a time every time!) We had a very nice little Valentine's Day. Jerry bought me my present last night, and I told him "Hey, I got you four things, so you'd better get me something GOOD!" LOL... and we were on the same wavelength, as usual, because, well, I'd mentioned I'd wanted this bear, the one you see in the picture. Well, his flower spins and it does a light up thing where it says "I love you" and "You're the greatest" and it also has light up hearts. Well, I'd been looking at them the other day, and I liked the brown bear better, but they also had a white bear. He picked the brown bear. I also called him asking him to get mint chocolate chip ice cream bars from Rite Aid, and he'd been thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, his timing was off by 15 minutes, they were closed when he got there and had been closed for 15 minutes... bummer! So I'm loving my bear, and I also got Garfield chocolates. Who doesn't know that I love Garfield? LOL... I also got Shabree Garfield chocolates, standing in for Sammi, I think it was, who got Shabree. We decided to do drawings this year to see who got who. Last year daddy and I just bought the girls stuff, but this year, they were pretty adamant about wanting to buy things for each other, and it was going to get crazy, so we all took a name out of a hat, and then went and spent no more than 5 dollars on that person. Well, except for daddy and I who ended up with each other (I got him, he traded Syd for me) so I got him a bunch of stuff. I might have traded too, come to think of it. Almond rocas are his favorite, and I'd already bought some, so I told them all I had to have daddy since I'd already started buying for him. So he took Syd and Shabree, I took Bec and she and I stood in for Alex and Sammi and bought their gifts for Shabree and Sydni. LOL... got kind of convoluted there. But we've basically decided we'll probably do all holidays from now on like that. Unless we end up with a LOT of money where it just doesn't matter at all, it's insane to have each person buy for every one else. We're getting to be too big of a family to do that. We already end up going to some extremes at Christmas, though I did pretty good this year. This next year, I'm going to have to look and see what's on clearance and what I can get for free and reduced. I got them a Barbie house last Christmas for free, and they don't care, they play with it constantly, especially Sammi. I'm GLAD I didn't pay a fortune for it, because they've painted it with wite-out, drawn their names on it...etc... it's still mostly intact, so that's fine. They really enjoy playing with it. It was a good gift, and they really don't care that it was used, so that's all the better. I'd like to get some nice Barbie dresses that I saw once on Ebay, but I'll have to look into it again and see if it's something I can budget for. Well, so far, I can't find the seller.

It's 8 p.m. now. Sydni dropped Alex on the carpet, fortunately, Alex is fine, easily pacified with some breast milk. Sydni, she cried for quite awhile after it happened, it gave her a good scare and she felt horrible about it. Alex simply flipped out of her arms and onto the floor. She cried, but no tears, and no red spots, and as I said, easily consoled.
I am having TONS of trouble getting Alex to sleep in her playpen, which we just today switched out with the cradle. This morning, she turned herself from her back to her belly in the cradle, and I said, That is the end of THAT. She sleeps in the closet, and the crib is too big. I'd bought the playpen when we went to Colorado and Nebraska so Sammi would have something to sleep in. That worked surprisingly well actually. Especially when NOT on the road. Anyway, Jerry suggested we use the playpen for the time being, and I thought that was an excellent idea. The closet is so perfect because it's very low light, and very quiet when the door is closed, so it's much easier to get to sleep and stay asleep. However, she's been dozing so much while feeding, that she's not getting anything CLOSE to a substantial nap. I'd been giving her a bottle before and putting her down in the cradle... so I've tried about 3 times today to put her down for a nap, and none of those times did she actually go to sleep. So I would guess that she's dozed for maybe half an hour... MAYBE an hour, since I ended up dozing off too. She's just not getting enough SLEEP. Boy, this is going to take some effort to make this work. Some things, bottles are just easier. Not that I would trade the experience of breast feeding, it's been SO worthwhile.
It's been a very nice day, but I think I'll concentrate on the picture project now.