I better not complain

I remember the days where gas used to be $.99. Those were the days! This was about 10 years ago. Today gas prices quadrupled. If you really think about, it’s not that bad. It could be going up one dollar a year. Could you imagine then?! $10 per gallon?!

Last time we filled up we paid $3.7something per gallon. And this was one of the cheapest places – Costco! Since I haven’t been out of the house since last Saturday, I’m not sure how much it is today. But I’m pretty sure that there are gas stations that charge over $4 per gallon.

But hey, it’s a lot BETTER then paying $7.40 per gallon. Yup, you read that right! Seven dollars and forty cents per one gallon of gas. That’s how much the gas costs in Lithuania. Since they use a different metric system (actually, US uses a different metric system from the whole world) I converted litres to gallons, and Litai (Lithuanian money) to Dollars.

It is 4 Lt per one Litre. 4 litres are in 1 Gallon. 4×4=16 Lt per one gallon. One US dollar = 2.16 Lt. 16/2.16=7.407 

Their income is a LOT less then the average income in the US. Just a roughly estimate: if you make $3000 a month in the US, in Lithuania you make 3000 Lt. But the gas is twice as expensive. CRAZINESS!!!

While $4 is still A LOT, heck, I’d take that over $7.40 any day!!

Guess what?!

We are sick again!! Yay!!

Not really Yay, but damn, why is this happening? Kids were throwing up last Friday nigh, then ended up with some diarrhea. I’ve been having a soar throat for the last 5 days. I thought today it was getting better, but as I sit here and typing this up, I’m having hard time swallowing saliva. Half the nose is totally congested, so only have one side to breath through. And the other side that is good, the air I’m breathing in is too cold for my throat, even though it’s not cold here. Some kind of a headache was hanging around all day here and there. Feel some kind of nasty cough is heading my way too. I dunno.

Should I just have some vodka or tequila or something? Maybe that would help and disinfect my body. Because nothing else seems to be working.

I better be loosing some weight while I’m sick and have no appetite.

Send something healthy my way. Please.

2 weeks

It’s been two weeks and we haven’t heard anything. That could be a very good sign! But I don’t have my hopes yet. Can’t say anything more about it, just yet. Now it’s just a waiting game.

Sick again?

This is officially the worst year of colds, viruses, flu’s, whatever you want to call it. My kiddo’s are sick again. I seriously can not believe this!! We’ve just gotten over of having some kind of virus a few weeks ago, and now they are coming down with something.

L started sniffling last night with a little cough here and there. This morning he woke up with 99.5 fever. A doesn’t really have the sniffles or cough, but her fever was 100 in the morning. It seems that it dropped down, just not sure how low because she won’t let me measure it.

The weather is BEAUTIFUL today and we had plans to go out to a park and let the kids play, but no, we’d rather stay inside. Because you know, we all LOVE the indoors. Especially with a beautiful and warm day with high 70’s of a temperature.

Does this mean that I’m a bad mom? Does it mean that I don’t take a good care of my kids? I seriously just want to cry!!!

They are not the best eaters out there, but I try to offer them healthy food. They love fruits and vegetables. And every morning (well, most every morning) I make them smoothies with bananas, strawberries (fresh now since they are in the season), blueberries, orange juice, carrot juice and whatever other fruit we have on hand (frozen or fresh). They also get daily vitamins. They both love milk, so the milk is not an issues. They have yogurt on daily basis. There rest of the food kind of varies from day to day and depending on their mood.

I’ve heard good thing about these vitamins and am going to get some today.

But if you have read this and have something else that works for you and your little ones, please share. I would really appreciate it.

You know you’re a mom when…

… you get sooooo excited about a new stroller. Yay!! I got a new stroller, again. The only difference this time is that we bought it used instead of a new one. But it is still new to us. Actually, the stroller is practically new, only used a handful of times, everything looks great. No stains, no tears, no faded spots, and the wheels are all in good shape. And most importantly we got a really good deal on it, considering it’s almost a new stroller. Anyway, can’t wait to go for a walk now.

When I was bringing it home from the car, both kids wanted to sit in it and they loved it. L really loved sitting and standing and being able to get off and on all by himself.

It will be perfect for the trips to the zoo, walks, malls.

Gloria Gaynor – “I Will Survive”

One of my old time favorites! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this song!

Enjoy!

Does it ever end?!

Does the laundry ever ends? I mean seriously. If I would want to, I would be doing laundry every freaking single day. But I choose not to. Instead, I just do it few times a week, few loads a day. But does it ever end? As soon as I finish those few loads, the next day there is a tons to wash again. Agh. You want to know what I’m doing today? LAUNDRY!!! Yup, and since I’ll probably be staying home most of the day today, I will probably end up doing more then a few loads. You know, the sheets, the towels, maybe even some rugs. Lucky me!

Los Angeles

Since I was too tired yesterday, I didn’t upload any photos from our weekend. Well, here they are now. Enjoy!

 

Griffith Observatory

 

City of Los Angeles. (you can see downtown LA)

 

The Pendulum

 

The Moon - Day & Night (it’s kind of hard to see it, bad pic angle, but you can see the left is darker then the right)

 

 

The front from one of the roofs of Observatory

 

And the famous HOLLYWOOD sign

The past few days

The weekends go by way too fast. It seems like it was Friday just moments ago, and now it’s Sunday night. Blah! I don’t really like Monday’s.

We had a pretty busy day today. Just like most of the Sunday’s I got to sleep in. Although I was waken up who knows how many times by the kids from about 7:45 to 8:30 or so. Agh, how I hate the whining!! Especially when it’s Sunday morning and we’re (DH and I) trying to sleep in. DH was nice and took the kids downstairs. We had a birthday party to go to. I thought it was at noon, so I wasn’t really rushing. I woke up a little before 10, Viktor runs into the room and says that the party is at 11. He said he checked the invitation and it said 11. We got the invite a while ago and I don’t know why I thought it was at 12. I get up, rush everywhere, running like a crazy women getting ready, getting the kids ready and we leave. We had lots of fun at the party. It was at the park, the weather was very nice, the food was great and most of all, the kids got along pretty well. Even though L got hurt a little, we still had a good time.

Last Firday I had a headache for half the day. Then Saturday it went away and this morning it was back. I woke up with a headche. And that is just the worst feeling ever. It doesn’t even feel that you’ve rested well. Took some medicine before we left for the party. It didn’t really go away, just got a little better. And then it came back again before we got home. It was nap time, kids went to sleep, I took some more meds and took a nap myself. It’s very unusual for me to nap during the day, so you can imagine how bad it was. Viktor woke me up after about 1.5 hrs, to see if we were still going to church. We did. We haven’t been in along time and I was looking forward to going. We also wanted to see how the kids would do at the Sunday school. Last time we went L started crying before we even got there, and that was the end to that. A hasn’t been to the Sunday school yet, so we didn’t really know what to expect from her.

As expected, L started crying right when we got to the classroom. He would not go in. He was holding on to me, asking me to come with him, or just to go out with me. I feels really sorry for the kid. I could see in his eyes, his face, how much he wanted to play with all the toys, but was afraid that I would leave, therefore, he was just standing and holding onto my hand. Viktor took A to the room next door and she was fine. He said she just walked in, looked around, started playing with toys. Didn’t even care when he left the room. After about 10 minutes there with L, I decided it was time to just leave him there and see what happens. And poor kid started crying as I started walking away from him. The teacher picked him up and started showing him things. As I was walking towards the church building, I could hear my little boy crying. I told them that if he cries for 10 minutes, to page me and I’d go get him. I the church I was looking at the time constantly. Ten minutes have gone by and they haven’t paged me. Fifteen minutes went by and nothing, twenty minutes went by and nothing. Could there something be wrong with my pager they gave me? Viktor went out to see if he could hear him cry. He walked by the building L was in and said there was no crying. He didn’t see what he was doing, but as long as he was quiet, it was a good sign.

After the service, first we went to get L. He was just sitting there at the table drinking his drink. So we let him be and went to get A. She was also sitting at the table with a cup. Right away when I saw her, I could tell that she’s been crying. OMG! My little girl was crying! I didn’t even think that she would cry. She is so outgoing, so for sure we thought she wouldn’t cry. The teacher said that she cried for about 10 minutes and then calmed down. Poor little girl! Then we went to get L. He was running around in sircle and playing with other kids. It was so nice to see him happy and playing when we were not there.

As promissed we took the to McDonlad’s. They both ate so much. Was it the crying? They even came by themselves to the table, ate and then went back to playing.

I asked L if he wants to go back to the school again:

“L, do you want to come back next Sunday?”

“yes”

“are you going to stay in the classroom by yourself?”

“yes”

“are you going to cry?”

“no”

Lets hope so! I really hope he starts enjoying going there, so that we can start going to the church again. I also hope that A will do better next time.

They both made their first school paintings. They are really cute and now hanging on our fridge. Awwwwwww!

***********************************************************************************************************

Saturday it was a very interesting day. I’ve been looking for a sit-n-stand stroller. I want to get a used one. We have a double one right now. So when we go for longer walks, zoo’s, etc. we take the double one. But sometimes L would not want to sit in it, and it just looks funny when i’m pushing adouble with ony one kid in there. Sometimes they will both be walking, and so it looks funnier me pushing it with no kids in there. So we decided to get a sit-n-stand. Sit-n-stand is a stroller where one kid sits in the front like in a regural stroller seat, while in the back there is a little bench and a standing area for the older kid. So if they want to sit, there is that option for them. Or they can stand if they choose to. Also, it is a little smaller then the double.

Ayway, so I found one used one. They are kind of hard to find. The lady told me the stroller is pretty new, they have barely used it. And the price was reasonable. So we drive about half an hour to go see and possible get the stroller. Only to find out one of the wheel is a little broken. The tire part is kind of riped in 2 places, looks like it’s a little ripped out. When you push the stroller that wheel is wheebly whably. I leaned the stroller to one side and span the one wheel and it was just shaking all over. Oh and there was a crack on the wheel part itself.

We decided not to get it. This could be a problem down the road. If it would be shaded somewhere, or stained (it did have a little stain in the back on the bench that the lady never told me about, and I couldn’t tell from the pictures she sent me) or even a little rip somehwere, then I might have considered getting it. But it’s the wheel! Didn’t want to take the chance. I was also thinking about the resale value. Eventually we won’t need it and probably try to resell it. With the bad wheel, I doubt someone would buy it. Unless I practically gave it away. So yeah, I was MAD!!! Why didn’t she tell me about the wheel in the first place? I talked to her on the phone and asked her if there was anything wrong. She said no. She told me they only used the stroller several times. This could have been true as the tires didn’t have much wear and tear on top of them, except for that one that was ripped, cracked. I guess the next stroller I find, I’ll be asking if the wheels are in good condition and work well.

After that we went and had lunch at Rally’s. Then we drove up to Griffith Park and visited newly remodeled Observatory. They added a restaurant which was really cool! It’s right on the cliff. They added more pretty cool stuff. The only thing is I would not recommend going there with little kids. Especially if they are the ones that kind of like to walk or run around. You won’t be able to really look at anything. You’ll just end up chasing you kid. Unless you can keep them in the stroller. Observatory is very stroller friendly.

And of course we took some pictures with the famous Hollywood sign.

Thats it for now. My headache is still here and I know I won’t be able to sleep in tomorrow, so, I must go.

Goodnight!

Just random stuff today:

I started a low carb diet on Monday. And man! I’m so missing all the good stuff like chocolates, pasta, potatoes. It’s even hard to think about it. The only thing that I’m not going to give up is my coffee creamer. A few years ago I did this diet and I lost 20 lbs in one month, and I was having creamer with my coffee. So hopefully it works out this time too. Well, wish me luck on loosing a few pounds and I will update about it later, probably next week.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you may remember form my older posts that I have to lay down with L for him to fall asleep. It goes for naps and night time. Yesterday for his punishment I told him that he’ll have to take a nap all by himself, that I won’t lay down with him. And you know what? He fell asleep!

L has been potty trained during the day for a little over a year now. We still use diapers at night time, as he still pees a lot during the night. He always wakes up with a soaked diaper. There were a few times here and there that it wasn’t even half full, but the fact that he still does a lot during the night, we are still using the diapers. During the day he’s been very good. But in the last few months he started peeing his pants. Not fully peeing in them, but just enough to wet them. It’s been about 3 months now and it is driving me crazy!! We’ve tried everything and he’ll still do it. There are days where he’ll be good about it, but then other days he’ll pee like 3-4 times in his underwear.

So yesterday in the morning he peed his pants and I told him if he does it again, he’ll have to take a nap by himself. And sure enough he did it. So off he went to sleep by himself. Funny thing is he didn’t even throw a fit about it. Usually he’ll cry and whine for me to go with him, but not yesterday.

So today I was getting the kids ready for the nap and L said that he wants to sleep on his own. I said sure!! Just told him that he actually has to stay in bed and sleep, not play around. And you know what, he’s sound asleep! Yippee!!! Maybe this will be a start for him on sleeping on his own. I’m not too happy about it yet, as it is only day 2, but hoping that this is the beginning. Maybe one good thing will come out of him peeing in his pants.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope it doesn’t rain today. We may need the rain, but I’m not looking forward to it. The weather channel showed that it was supposed to rain sometime today. We had a play-date at the park this morning and I was having second thoughts about going, but I’m glad we went. It was a little cloudy when we woke up, but the sun started breaking through and so far it’s been pretty nice out. A few small clouds here and there, but so far it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain.