So, I totally would have posted this sooner - as in a week earlier - but I was having such a hard time coming up with seven INTERESTING things about us. And yes, I know that MIGHT just mean we are not all that interesting! Anyways, here we go. Seven things about the Duggan family...
So there you go - there's a little bit more about us that maybe you didn't know before now! We're absolutely not perfect and are constantly learning as parents and as a couple. There are things I'd love to change about our family and other things I wouldn't want to trade for the world.
And as always, I'd love to hear what people think -- whether it's seven things about your family or responses to what you think about my family.
Our kids stay up pretty late. (They also sleep in late.)
They didn't always but they sure do these days. Tony gets home from work around 6:30pm most days and it's just nice to optimize the time we have together by keeping the kids up a little bit later. Most nights we strive to have them down by 9/9:30 but sometimes it's not until 10pm that we finish bedtime and by that time we're exhausted. It's been nice to be able to do this in some respects (more time together/for the kids and daddy) but it can definitely be stressful. With Presley starting preschool here soon we will move bedtimes up and have more adult time in the evenings which is a bonus! When it comes to the kids getting up in the morning sometimes Presley will sleep until 9am/10am but other days she will randomly wake up around 6am/7am - those days are a little bit more stressful if they've gone to bed late. And I'm honestly not sure how late Molly would sleep if we let her! Most days I wake her up around 11 if she's not already up and then she goes down for a late afternoon nap, too. So my kids get enough sleep, they just tend to stay up a little bit later than most kiddos.
We don't have a dinner table.
This one bothers me because I'd love to have a dinner table. When it came to furnishing our new house I made some hasty decisions and one of them was buying a bar-height table... what was I thinking? We've since sold it and now in our dine-in area of our kitchen we have a couch. (Which usually houses clean laundry.) One of the reasons we haven't gotten a kitchen table yet is because I want a nice one that'll be big enough and one built to last.
Our kids DON'T sleep in our bed.
Though, I suppose we don't have a totally perfect record. I used to fall asleep nursing Molly in the middle of the night when she was a baby WAY more often than I'd like to admit. But those few times aside, our kids don't sleep in our bed. It's mostly because I would probably sleep 0% of the night but honestly my Aunt gave me the advice to start this from day one of having kids and I really liked the advice. We love having children and being a family (rather than just us two) but the kids fill up enough of our house/day/conversations/thoughts/etc. that it is important to us to have one sacred spot for me and Tony at the end of the day.
It's way easier to shower our babies when they're tiny.
I don't know how people bathe newborns but I loathe bath time for little ones. I worry so much about them slipping and swallowing too much water and it's also literally a pain in the back to lean over and do bath time for tiny babies. I'm not a huge fan of bath time in the sink either. So that left us with showering our babies and it's totally worked for us. One of us showers and the other is on standby to take the slippery, clean baby once they're all done. Easy peasy. Anybody else do the same thing?
I make two meals every night.
It might be an unpopular thing to do among parents, but it's just what works for us. I'll make something quick and easy for the kids - and hopefully throw something nutritious in there - while also putting together a separate dinner for me and Tony. The kids like macaroni and cheese, cheese and bean quesadillas, grilled cheese, cheese raviolis, ham and cheese sandwiches, or basically anything with cheese in there! They like sliced up bell peppers, pretty much any fruit - canned or fresh, green beans, corn, black beans, apple sauce, occasionally carrots or celery... just easy things to throw together. It would be so much easier to just make one meal and try to get them eat what we eat but most days I have no fight left in me. Maybe once we get a kitchen table (and the kids are a little older) we will start to eat dinner as a family!
We took our time with potty training.
I worried a lot about potty training and wondered if I should be a bit more forceful with it but it really didn't feel right to thrust it upon her. So I introduced her to the potty. We did a lot of checking it out and sitting on it. She would use it occasionally early in the beginning but we continued to use diapers or pull-ups. Presley felt comfortable peeing on the potty long before she felt comfortable pooping on the potty. I remember feeling so dejected most days while cleaning up poopy pull-ups... it didn't feel like we would EVER have a fully potty trained kid. One of the last days of her pooping in her pull-up I remember just telling her, "Look, we can't keep doing this. You're getting too big for this!" I just said it mostly out of exasperation but very soon after that it all seemed to click for her! It's just like with breastfeeding the first kiddo - we were BOTH on that learning curve and neither one of us knew what we were doing until we just got it. It was easier breastfeeding my second kiddo so I'm hoping since we know what we're doing a little bit more when it comes to potty training that it'll be easier the second time around, too. One great thing about gradually easing into potty training was that we dealt with VERY little accidents! Though, this could just be Presley. She's a pretty neat and tidy kid... especially compared to her little sister. (So we might really actually be screwed this time around when it comes to potty training!)
We're very, very lucky to live so close to family.
It makes celebrations better, it helps in the hardest of times, and the every day support is fantastic. We were fortunate to live near so many of my family members in the Quad Cities and now here near Tony's parents in Memphis. Both girls have been fortunate to have grandmothers in town to be their first babysitters but no one is more lucky in that respect than Tony and I. We're able to go on dates regularly which helps so much in so many aspects. (And while we're away we can trust 100% that our kids are cared for!) It's awesome to have lunch and go shopping with the kids and Grandmommy on her day off or have Grandmommy and Papa over on Sundays. It'll be invaluable to have the extra help and love and care after Crosby is here - for all of us. I'm thankful for the birthdays and holidays and all the special days! I'd love to some day live in Florida or Texas but when it comes to choosing between a dream location or living near family, it'll be very hard to ever choose against living near family.
So there you go - there's a little bit more about us that maybe you didn't know before now! We're absolutely not perfect and are constantly learning as parents and as a couple. There are things I'd love to change about our family and other things I wouldn't want to trade for the world.
And as always, I'd love to hear what people think -- whether it's seven things about your family or responses to what you think about my family.
