BOB

No, this isn't a post about my dad or any member of my extended family (I'm pretty sure half of them are Robert/Rob/Bob). This is about our stroller. We have gone through our fair share of strollers. We have been so blessed to find GREAT deals on strollers since the girls were born. We have spent a combined $200 on strollers, which is a huge win for a great stroller in general.

We recently purchased a BOB jogging stroller off of Craigslist. Creepy, I know. But it was a great deal. We registered for the Chicago Marathon today, so our jogging stroller is going to get some good use!

Registering for the marathon was a marathon in itself. It took each of us 40 minutes to register...they wanted to make sure we were dedicated I guess...


 This is what our BOB looks like... kind of.

We got our stroller right before Austin left for a youth retreat. Our sweet friends Brad and Stacy came up for the retreat. We found out Grace had phenomena right before the retreat, so Stacy and I stayed back. There are very few people I could just hang with for an entire weekend, but Stacy is one of those people in my life. We never run out of things to talk about. We will have our own talk show one day. Just wait for it. We took the girls on a walk on one of the days... when we got back we had a hard time folding up the stroller. Okay, when I say hard, I mean it probably took us 20- 30 minutes. It somehow ended up in our house, but I'm not exactly sure how...

Ha. At least it made it in the house. 

They are cute... even in a stroller.

Sleep Training

It's been a while. Who am I kidding, it's been a lot longer then a while.

The girls are almost a year old. I'm thrilled that we have made it through this last year, but a little heart broken that my sweet girls are no longer babies. Grace and Kate are the most amazing blessing in our lives. They have taught us so much, and are constantly bringing smiles to our faces.

Over the last year, one thing that hasn't brought smiles to our faces are the hours of 1am - 5am. We saw a lot of those times over the last year! I'm pretty sure I have read just about every book on the market about sleeping. We have tried so many different methods in order to get our girls to sleep, but NOTHING has worked... We just didn't know what to do.The girls would constantly wake each other up...we were just at our wits ends. Finally, we decided to start looking into some sleep training.  I can't stand to hear my girls cry. I can't. There was no way we could do the cry it out method. I knew if someone would come in and tell us to let the girls to just cry I would never be able to do that. But, there had to be a solution to our sleep problem.

I finally found a sleep consultant who was having a free seminar, and we decided to check it out. When she said that she didn't use the cry it out method, I realized there was hope for us. A sleep plan that didn't involve my sweet girls screaming, and I was able to be in their room until they fell asleep. Okay, I could do this. We hired her, and I am pleased to say I have had babies sleeping through the night for the last 3 nights. Yes, 11 hours plus!

Up until this point Austin was getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night. He took 80% of the night time shift, because my blood sugars would go crazy when I was tired and stressed. He was such a trooper. It is such a wonderful thing to be getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night. We can breathe a sigh of relief.

We did a few things differently, but one of the best things we did was buy a white noise machine. This is such a silly thing, but the night we did Grace slept through the night. No Joke.

 This is similar to the one we ended up getting.

I am thankful that we ended up getting a plan that Austin and I could both agree on, and stick to together. We are still working out some kinks in our sleep plan, but a rested Mommy and Daddy are a happy Mommy and Daddy.


In totally unrelated news, this weekend we went to a mall in the burbs. When we got there, we realized we forgot our stroller. AWESOME. We found out that the mall had loaner strollers, and so we headed on over to the customer service counter. The girls LOVED the stoller, I don't know what it was about it. They just giggled and waved at everyone, they are the biggest hams.

Kate is in the front and Grace is in the Back. They had so much fun! 

That's our sleep update for the day!
Sweet Dreams!