gabriel and Julian's lunch

This week, Tonya has been closed, so I brought Julian to the gym on Monday and Wednesday, where he eats his lunch (that I bring) in the childcare. He's so good about this! He sits and eats a much better lunch than I can often get him to eat at home, like rice, broccoli and chicken.

Though today's lunch was a very typical no-brainer, for some reason I felt oddly satisfied that they both had a nice healthy lunch, and ate it all. I'm not sure, but I suspect that Gabriel's new preschool doesn't serve anything with peanuts in it; it's a big trend these days. Certainly it seemed that Gabriel was glad to have a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and fresh strawberries. Other than the bread not being whole-grain (I still haven't found any that everyone consistently likes), it was a nice healthy lunch -- and they both actually ate it, no fuss (that was the best part).

We had swim class again today. As usual, Gabriel was very enthusiastic and excited about it, and Julian hesitant and reluctant, but he's warming up. I think taking the noisy dome off the pool will make a big difference. Last year, Julian warmed up so much that in playtime, he wouldn't quit diving into the water!

Though we had a good swim class and good lunch, I had a hard time with the boys today. Partly, I was very tired and not feeling well today, and my patience has been running very thin with having to give Julian countdowns for EVERY step of the day. Gabriel got upset after swim class when he took his towel off and I wouldn't put it back on him, telling him instead to get dressed, and that kicked off a long snit.

The worst thing is that Julian has been getting increasingly putzy about his naps; making one excuse after another to keep me in there, and getting one countdown after another just to pick a book, sit with me to read it, turn the last page, get into bed, lie down. Oh, for the days when he'd dive down onto the bed after reading a book once! Or, he insists on lying down on the floor, where he's not nearly as comfortable, and wakes up crying. And the past few days, his naps have been much shorter.

Julian's not napping well is a real disaster for me since I'm so tired by the afternoon, and often, so tired of constantly mediating between them. I also think the lack of any real time off from both of them (Tonya's closed this week, and before that, Julian was sick for 3 out of 4 mornings) has been really wearing me down. I'm just not being a good mom to them these days, fresh strawberries for lunch notwithstanding.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but one fun thing for me: Gina's mom, Betsy, is also pregnant with #3! She's due just about 6 weeks after I am, around Thanksgiving. How nice for me that I have a friend to go through this with! We were just saying tonight at Coffee that we both need to pick up our exercising, just to survive pregnancy with two little kids. And how! I want to be one of those women in the Title 9 catalog. That's my inspiration. Now if only my stomach would cooperate....