Sanity Busters tiny room version

We have been in our extended stay studio room for almost a month now. Yonah is five months old now and is getting to be a big, happy, laughing, squirmy little boy! He is scooting backwards and grabbing at things at every chance he gets! We are still nursing strong and I am thoroughly enjoying being able to do that. Naisa gets into everything and every item in this room is a toy, it seems. All the extra plug covers have become pacifiers (and she never had a pacifier, mind you). All the DVDs go in and out of their cases. All e parts of her still unused potty are in various spots all over the room. When I go get free oranges and coffee in the morning, from the lobby, she claims them as her own and plays with them for the next hour. I have found the. Under our bed and Yonahs bed. She does funny things! When e heater is blowing air into the room, she mimics washing her hands, and says,"washing hands!" She claims everything in the room as hers. I hear,"that's Naisa's bed, bathroom, nap, chair, toy, blanket." All the time. 

Due to the nature of every item being relocated several times a day, and mycleaning several times a day, I get weary. Very weary of putting things back for the twelfth time. And telling Naisa not to play with something for the fourteenth time. It's exhausting. And when she doesn't listen, I get too tired of the fits she has because she's is angry because she said she didn't want to eat. Then I have to fight her to take any bite, let alone Naisa  taking her own bite with the utensil herself! She gets timeouts in her bed a couple times a day, and I really encourage nap time earlier than later.

There have been a couple times I haven't replaced things in their original places after Naisa has relocat them. Unfortunately, both of these things were favorite DVDs. For the life of me, I cannot find where they are in the room! I have looked everywhere! Several times, at least once a day for the past week and a half, I have looked for the lost dvd. And the the second one went missing! All because naisa couldn't stop playing with them! 

But it drives me insane! There are onlY so many places that you can look for things In a room the size of a master bedroom. Both surfs up and blues clues have disappeared. I know we are going to find the. The day we move out and i am going to be so mad! 

This concludes Sanity Busters: Small Room edition

Living in a Room with the curtains shut

There have been several times this week that have pushed me to angry.
Angry that I am stuck living in a tiny room most of the day without adult contact.
Angry that there are no sidewalks nearby or playgrounds closer than a mile away.
Angry that Naisa always screams as hard as she can when she's mad, even if Yonah is napping at the time (three feet away from her)
Angry I have to pull the blackout curtain closed when I am nursing- there are no mini blinds!
Angry that Naisa just wants to drink milk and doesn't want to eat very many other things.
Angry that I need to touched by my little humans all day long.

I am tired this morning because Yonah decided that he wanted to be awake and not asleep between 11:45 and 12:45 last night. I get tired of the domino effect of one child waking up the other.

It seems like a dream that we will soon have more space including separate rooms for the bedrooms and the kitchen, and maybe even (gasp) a dishwasher! I am thankful though, for the free coffee and oranges in the lobby, as this week we ran out of fruit early on and the refrigerator is getting emptier and emptier and we need to make it to Saturday.

I dropped the laptop on my big toe yesterday, and spent the day with throbbing intense pain and I am limping around. At least Naisa didn't want to go for a walk yesterday. My nail is almost completely purple, and I am going to lose it.

We we went for a walk on Tuesday, around our building and the one next to ours. They're was a block of grass in between that had lots of crunchy leaves that we walked through. That was great for us- the weather was rather warm in comparison to the polar voters that has arrived.

Naisa has been obsessed with this Backyardigens Surfs Up DVD. She wants to watch it over and over all day long. I do make her take breaks, especially when she starts pressing buttons instead of watching, and I tell her to play with her toys (always met with great protests). I have been working to teach her shapes and colors, and have started on capital letters. Repetition and fun pictures are key for this, and to go very slowly because I have her attention for one to three minutes. There are a few letters she can recognize if I ask, "what's that?" Like B and N and sometimes A and I and S (especially if they are in that order, writing "NAISA". And the others, I just keep using and describing.

I am sick of disposable diapers and pee coming out the side. Naisa just peed on the bed... A big toddler pee. Now I have to get a new sheet.

Tiny space, constant mess

With the amount of stuff that we have, the small space we have, and the overactive Naisa's need to touch and move everything that is at her level, we have a constant pile of things all over the room (because that is what we have--a room. Naisa (thank goodness!) has a little curtain that we can close off from the room (she's in the "closet") and Yonah will sleep adequately once he's asleep and and noise levels are kept at a level pace.

I clean up everything approximately twice a day, once around nap time and once around bed time. I have removed the potty from Naisa's level because she screams "NO!NO!NO!" and takes the bowl out from under the seat, and makes a mess of it. There's no place for the toys besides Naisa's bed and she can't reach them unless I get them for her, and it's extra work for me to be Naisa's servant. And not really my style. She needs to be independent.

It's much more challenging to wash dishes in a room when your children are sleeping...right next to the the kitchen. So I have to put dishes off until morning, which is a little unwise due to the reviews I read about this extended stay having issues with cockroaches. . . so I need a better plan for that.

Yonah is starting to grab at things, and I think he needs some soft stuffed chewing toys (mom? wanna makes something?). He's starting to lift his hips up and scoot backwards (he not five months yet!), and so we have to watch where we place him and what's around him now that he's moving and grabbing and we're in a unsatisfactory extended stay.

OK. that's all I can think about right now because I'm watching 7th heaven at the same time and Yonah's got a poopy diaper!

Shalom.

Our Trip to Nashville, plus extended stay first impressions

The Trip to Nashville
We had a very long trip from Fredericksburg.
We split the trip into two days, Naisa and Ben in the rented car and Yonah and I in our car.  On Friday, I packed up most of our things and then on Saturday morning, we packed some more and went to get the rental car at ten. Then we all had to drive back (did I mention it was cold and looking like rain?), pack up the cars with our things, get gas and air in the tires, and then finally at 12:30, we were on the road.

When we stopped the first time, Ben saw a wasp in his car and proceeded to try to kill it with the very large, very full bag of Late July blue tortilla chips. We now have a very large bag of crumbs.

Ben handled Naisa in his car, and didn't use the DVD player (!), but let her play and nap and scream while he listened to his audio Bible. It was during this trip that Naisa became attached to a purple blanket and got insane when it fell to the floor of the car and Ben couldn't reach it.

I had Yonah in the car and because I was driving we had to stop every time he got hungry or inconsolable.

While Yonah has napping, the drive felt great, doable, and not stressful. But when he would get fussy, I would call Ben and we would find a place to park and I would nurse him. he needed to nurse some, but he mostly needed to look and interact with me. After the third time we stopped, we got on the road again and Yonah started crying almost right away, and I tried to calm him, but I had been singing the whole drive, it was dark, it was raining on and off and that was stressing me out and also trying to follow Ben. I watched the clock for ten minutes and soon i was crying--exhausted, frustrated I couldn't calm Yonah, mad we still had two more hours. I did that for a little while and then I called Ben and we pulled over and right then, Yonah fell asleep.

And then we drove the rest of the way. When we got to the hotel and got into our room (which the door was very squeaky and the heater did not work, but we slept fine. We ate when we got there--11pm, and then all were in bed by midnight. We left the next morning at 9 (adjusted time), went to breakfast and left there at 10, and then began our drive from Knoxville to Nashville. It was only three hours, was rather scenic, and besides someone trying to veer into my line, there was no drama.

Extended Stay first impressions
We made it to the extended stay around one. shortly after, they gave us keys to the room and then the long afternoon started. The room we were given had a toilet that was eternally running so we called them to have them come take a look at it. And then we waited. We had not had lunch at this point. about a half an hour later, someone showed up, took a look at it, and told us that he needed to consult with the manager. Some more time passed, and they called us to tell us that the toilet needed some maintenance and we could look at another room, but it was being cleaned at the moment so we had to wait. Well we waited over an hour (calling a couple times and no one picking up!) and finally the manager came and gave us new keys for the other room. We walked in to our non smoking room that was freshly scented with an air spray and we could both tell that this wasn't quite was we originally had in mind for the month, but since his company was paying for it, we didn't really have an option.

I have spotted at least two cigarette burns on furniture, there are places where the pain is scraped off the wall. There is a hole in the sheet. I found frozen pink something in the freezer, and two pairs of boxers in the drawers. They brought use a "clean" set of dishes and a toaster, and the coffeemaker still had a filter and grounds in it (and we returned that to them, no longer needing it). The bar latch on the door was loose, and there are cracks on the window. We are on the first floor. I feel relatively safe, but it's not the carriage house we were in. There is space for both kids, and our things, but it is a tight fit.

I am thankful to have a place to be, to have our things in here and to be able to not be in transition. But I am tired today because our neighbor was watching the football game with his loud swearing friends last night until eleven or something. But don't worry, Pittsburgh won. Eh.

We are not impressed with this extended stay. When Ben stayed with the extended stay in Lynchburg, it was new, nice, and high quality. They one is more run down, and not really ideal, but because it's location is in the center of the three different stores that we need to be at in the next couple weeks, we'll have to make it work.

The weird part is that there is another extended stay right next to this one, with just one other hotel in between them. And it looked nicer. It's rather bizarre.