The last couple of weekends have been ones with huge learning curves for the Conner family! Ricky and I are huge fans of working in our yard. We have about 1/2 and acre or 2 city lots and have about 6 major planting areas that must be weeded, mulched, fertilized, etc along with a pool house that must be cleaned, a new path of pavers that Ricky is making, gutters to be cleaned out, siding to be pressured washed along with a deck and patio, we need to stain our deck as well, transplant new plants, get bolder rocks to finish the pool edging, open the pool and clean it, paint the picket fence, etc Trust me we have a lot to do, but love it!!!!
We love to garden and plant new plants as well as just hang out in the yard. Every spring we create our annual Lowes shopping list and head out to make our purchases such as mulch, paint, garden decor, plants, etc This is usually our biggest purchase for the year and it allows us to get everything we need to get the yard ready for the summer. We usually pick a Saturday and spend most of it at Lowes marking everything off our our to-do purchase list. However, this year we had to learn several new shopping techniques since we have a newborn with us.
We decided to venture to Lowes last weekend to round up all of our supplies. Most people would probably ask why don't you have someone watch Chloe while you do that and we would but you see my Mother is the only relative we have in Erwin that we would allow to watch Chloe at this age and she keeps my brothers two children Monday thru Friday so the weekend is her only days off and it just wouldn't be fair to have her be tied down another day. She has a life too!
So Ricky and I decided to take Chloe with us. We had to figure in her feeding and nap times which was interesting. We knew if I fed her before we went she would probably sleep most of the time at Lowes. On our first trip we had about 2hours and it flew by. She did sleep in her carset while I pushed the buggy. Since we only had 2 hours we had to make another trip on Sunday. We did the same thing on Sunday and it worked great! The hardest part is that we have to schedule everything around feedings and since she eats every 3 hours on the dot it is pretty easy to know when we can go and can't go.
We ended up making a third trip to get more stones for our walkway and on that trip, we had to have my mom watch her because we had to take two trucks to get all the stones and I didn't feel comfortable taking her in the truck! We were only gone about and hour and a half and then we picked her up from Granny's house.
Along with learning how to shop with Chloe we have also had to learn how to do yard work with her. See in the old n days Ricky and I might spend all day Saturday working in the yard from 9am to 9pm with very few breaks. With a baby however it is a whole new story.
The first adventure in the yard my mom came over and helped us by watching her in her stroller she would get fussy and then go to sleep. We only worked that day for about 2 hours and then stopped because we didn't know how to manage it with her.
Our second adventure in the yard went much better. As soon as Chloe had her 9am feeding we took her outside and walked around with her for a bit. We showed her the yard and played with her then around 10am we put her in her stroller and she slept till noon her next feeding. Of course by that point I was all hot and sweaty and didn't want to nurse her on a hot sweaty boob so I gave her a yummy bottle and then played with her and put her back in her stroller in the shade with me while I planted and cleaned one of our flower beds and she slept until 3pm. I did the same schedule until 6pm when I went in cleaned up and called it a day. Chloe slept really good that night in her crib. I guess all the sunshine and fresh air was soothing!
On our third yard adventure I think we finally got it down pat. I know that I can pretty much work from 9am to 6pm relatively easy with Chloe and she doesn't mine. This time we were in the back garden so she could stay under the patio. Since I hate knats and didn't want them to attack her I bought a stroller bug net. I didn't want to put her in her stroller this time so I brought her bouncy chair out and put the bug net over it. We also brought out a fan that blew air over her because it was like 84 degrees and kinda warm. She loved it! She just sat and watched us and then she would fall asleep. IT was a great day.
No comments:
Post a Comment