Too busy to blog

I've been slammed at work for the past few weeks, so that is my lame excuse for being neglectful here. I had to travel for work last week (all of last week, got back yesterday afternoon after leaving the previous Monday), and didn't have regular internet access during that time. Now I'm faced with another looming work deadline, so I need to make myself scarce again. I'll try to pop in when I can, but I don't expect to post anything of substance until next week...and I have another deadline next week.

We've hit the potty jackpot

For my long time readers you may remember that we had a bit of trouble potty training The Boy. Eventually it worked, but there was much frustration on my part before it did. The Girl is just 2 years and 3 months old and she is already basically potty trained. I credit daycare for this feat, because we certainly didn't initiate the process. The Boy was over 3.5 before training did anything, so I just assumed we had another year of diapers ahead of us. I even recently purchased a mega pack of Kirkland diapers from Costco, but I'm not sure we will need them all. The Girl has been in her new underwear all weekend, and has remained accident free.

Way to go honey, and thanks for taking it upon yourself to potty train, your parents are too lazy to help you in that department. I think that perhaps you are trying to make up for being so ornery your first 4 months of life, and your parents greatly appreciate it!

Hello treadmill my old friend

Forgive this post, but as I was running on the treadmill this fine morning I started composing a sad and lame little version of the awesome Simon and Garfunkel tune The Sound of Silence. The background is that I was running on my incredibly loud treadmill early in the morning, and my children woke up in the middle of my run. If you can finish it with treadmill running appropriate lyrics for the last two verses of the song I will bow down to you. I started watching the local news after I got these three verses down:

Hello treadmill, my old friend,
I’ve come to run on you again,
Because my husband who is trav-ling,
Left our kids while they were sleeping,
And the addiction that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of loudness.

In restless dreams I ran alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a closet light,
I turned my shoes to the hard and fake
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A red L-E-D
That split the dawn
And touched the sound of loudness.

And in the dim light I saw
Two other people, maybe more.
Children waking without screaming,
Children whining without listening,
Children disturbing runs that mommies couldn’t share
And they both dared
Disturb the sound of loudness.

The Telephone Game

Here’s a fun little link-sharing Meme, courtesy of Fracas, that could devolve rather quickly into something a little less than wholesome:

Remember when we were kids and at every opportunity, some adult would have us play that silly Telephone game? You know… the one where the lead person comes up with a sentence or statement, whispers it into the ear of the next person in line, and the sentence is passed from person to person until it reaches the end of the line. The last person then repeats the sentence out loud, the first person announces what it actually was, and everyone gets to laugh about how goofy it got by being passed from ear to ear and being altered because of mispronunciations and hearing ability.

Of course I realize that the game was simply a means for adults to keep us in line while we were waiting for something or killing time. Haven’t we even now as adults, tried to use it on our own kids?

Being the silly kind of fracas that I am, I’ve decided to create an internet version of the game, and use it as an opportunity for link-getting. Everyone wants links, and yet lots of people I know, prefer to get their links in a non-obvious kind of way. We’ve all done the “copy this list and create a post and you’ll get links” type of tag…at least once, but most of us don’t want to fill our blogs with those posts. It may get links, but eventually will chase readers away.

This is a fun way to give your readers something entertaining to read and get a few links too.

Instructions:
If you’ve been tagged, check the last entry on the list. Copy this entire post, add your name and link to the end of the list, copy the sentence in the previous person’s entry and change ONE word in it to try and change the meaning of the sentence for your entry. Name and link only ONE person to tag and then post the whole thing as a new entry in your own blog. Please make sure to transfer all the links to your post otherwise you aren’t providing fair linkage to the people before you. Although this will take longer to get around, by tagging only one person you will avoid making mass enemies by having to tag many people, and it will also guarantee only one true version of the game is circulating out there. Fracas, the creator, will attempt to keep tabs on the game and periodically report on it.
Please try not to tag someone you see is already on the list. If you’re on the list, have been tagged again by someone who didn’t pay attention to the instructions and you don’t want to do another turn, please leave a comment at this post over at Fracas, and Fracas will take your turn for you in order to keep the list going.

1. Fracas - http://fracas.wordpress.com/
writes:Never continue dating anyone who is rude to the waiter.

2. Mark @ Blogitude - http://www.blogitude.com/
writes:Never continue dating anyone who is nude to the waiter.

3. Wiggy - @ http://damewigginsoflee.wordpress.com/
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude to the waiter.

4. Froggy @ The Road Less Traveled - http://froglette79.wordpress.com/
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude under the waiter.

5. InTheFastLane@ That's Life - http://thatslifev2.blogspot.com/
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude under the water.

6. Treadmillista @ Just Treadmilling Around - http://treadmillinginplace.blogspot.com/
Forever continue dating everyone who is nude under the water

I Tag...Christine @ Watch me! no, watch me! - http://watchmenowatchme.blogspot.com/

And modesty has left the building

The other Moms of kids old enough to open doorknobs can likely relate to this...I hope. It has been at least 3 years since I have been able to pee in privacy. Oh sure at first I made the cursory attempt to shut the bathroom door while I peed, but after hundreds of screams of MOMMY I NEEEEED you with pounding on the door and me having to get off of the toilet to open the door, I stopped shutting the door much less locking it. Occasionally I shut the door now, only to have a toddler or preschooler burst in on me aghast that I would shut them out of the room I'm in. It used to bother me, but now peeing with the door open has become my new normal. It is so extreme now that even when the kids are in bed I leave the door open while peeing.

T walked in on me peeing a few weeks ago (after the kids were in bed), and gave me a load of crap about it. Not only is it not his new normal, but he has never given in to the whole peeing with the door open idea. He still very much shuts doors when he uses the bathroom, a commendable trait I suppose. I have noticed that the kids don't pound on the door when he is in the bathroom, there is no DAAAADY I NEEED YOU. They give him his space, his privacy, they leave him alone. I know there have been knocks on the door when he is using the bathroom, but he mostly ignores them until he is done. Perhaps I need to try his approach, because the whole peeing with the door open isn't exactly my cup of tea. Any bets as to how this little experiment will turn out?

How much to pay a babysitter

I stumbled upon a babysitting rate calculator a while back. Mostly out of curiosity I entered the information which fits our household and our normal babysitter. I was given the rate of $5.75 per hour, which is in the ballpark of what we've paid in the past. I usually feel like an idiot when it comes time to pay our babysitter, because we have never really discussed her rate. Why is it that I trust this girl to watch my kids, but yet feel uncomfortable asking her how much she expects to be paid? Of course as someone who babysat plenty as a teen, I don't think I ever gave parents a set rate, just accepted whatever they gave me. I was likely underpaid then, when I made $2.00 an hour for watching FOUR kids, the youngest of whom was in diapers.

Anyway, I am posting this mainly because I'm curious to see how accurate the calculator is for other areas. Is it in the ballpark for you?

How the podcast ruined my run

A few weeks back I discovered that I could download free podcasts from Itunes. It didn't seem all that exciting at first, but when I realized that I could replace the old tired music on my little Ipod Shuffle with podcasts for my runs I got a little thrill. So this morning I set out for my 10 miler armed with a water bottle, my cell phone, a baseball cap, and my magenta Shuffle filled with podcasts. The first mile was filled with music, but then I found a podcast and got engrossed. I made it through mile 6 or so on that first podcast (Manic Mommies if you are interested), and then Wait Wait Don't Tell Me came on. Ahhh, what a great show that is! I was so engrossed in listening to the shows that I forgot to worry about all of the aches and pains that can sometimes accompany a run. I also forgot to pay attention to my pace. My first mile was done in a respectable 9:15, but the rest of the run was downhill from there. I had only one other sub 10:00 minute mile today because I was running like I wasn't even trying. Oh well, I think I usually run my long runs too fast, so perhaps this was good for me. If nothing else it felt like the fastest 10 miler I've ever done...even if it was more than 10 minutes slower than I would have liked.

If you have any good podcasts to pass along please do so, my weekend long runs will be ever so grateful for new things to divert my attention from the fact that my feet are continually pounding against the pavement for miles on end.

Remodel: DONE!

I’ve been a little lazy about posting the final before and after pictures, but without further ado here they are (click on the images to see them full size):

The kitchen


The dining room and entry way


The living room


The office


And the bathroom (I never took a before picture, for reference there was carpet, ghastly wallpaper, and lots of open space for a former half bathroom)


We are very happy with the outcome, and we were happy with our contractor. The project moved along quickly, we were well informed along the way, and when there was a big snag at the end they came through and made everything right. Looking at the before and after pictures really allows us to see just how different our house is now. We love our house now, and we would never have said that before. Now to buy some furniture, hang things on the walls, and just get comfortable in the space again.

Mashed potato tacos

I'm not quite sure what this says about me, but I found a link to this recipe on one of the message boards I frequent and I cannot stop thinking about making it. Not only have I decided that it is perfectly acceptable for T and the kids to eat omelets for dinner while I eat a vat of guacamole with chips (I added some lettuce and some tomatoes so I feel like it was actually a fairly healthy meal for me), but now I am dreaming of eating mashed potato tacos. No, I am not pregnant. Mashed potatoes, cheese, sour cream, french fried onions, taco shells, what more could you ask for? Of course I was thinking that perhaps it might taste even better with cream cheese instead of sour cream. I might end up declaring myself too lazy and just eating the entire can of french fried onions though, so I should resist the urge to buy the ingredients.

It could have been me

Yesterday started out as any Wednesday does in my world, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. I went through my day, going to work, picking up the kids from daycare, having dinner, etc, and then I got a phone call from T. He had taken The Girl to the hardware store with him, The Boy and I were home putzing around in the yard when the phone rang. T asked me if I was watching TV, if I had heard the news, what news I said. The bridge on 35W over the river collapsed. What? It collapsed? I instantly forgot about the lawn watering we were attempting and took The Boy inside. Turned on the TV and then sat there horrified by what I was seeing. When T had said the bridge over the river, I had thought immediately of the bridge over the Minnesota River which is much closer to our house, but no it was the bridge over the Mississippi. How could this happen? Just 10-15 miles from our house this huge tragedy took place, and was unfolding before our eyes.

Now I can’t stop myself from watching/reading/listening to any coverage I can find. Seeing Matt Lauer covering the story in Minneapolis live this morning struck a chord with me. This National story feels so personal to me. That bridge hasn’t been part of my daily commute for many years, but as a born and bred Minnesotan, someone who attended the University of Minnesota, and lived so very near to that bridge at one point in my life, it just feels like my world has been violated. I can’t even count how many times I have driven over that bridge, it was part of my daily commute for many years, but in the recent years I’ve only traveled over it a few times per month. I am so thankful that none of my friends or family members were on the bridge yesterday evening, but that isn’t allowing me to move on.

I am angry that there was prior evidence of fatigue stress on the bridge structure that wasn’t addressed. As a mechanical engineer I can’t help but go back to my statics and dynamics courses where I learned exactly what fatigue stress can do. I’m not ready to blame yet though, we don’t know enough. Nobody wanted this to happen, and I have to believe that if the bridge inspectors and engineers really felt it was a safety hazard it would have been fixed immediately regardless of budget constraints.

Mostly I just can’t get this image of me in my car, with my two kids strapped into their car seats behind me, as we plunge into the water out of my head. I know I have to stop thinking this way for my mental health, but there it is right now. What would I have done? Could I have saved both of my children? This immense feeling of dread has taken over my head today, and my thoughts are with everyone who has lost a loved one on the bridge, or is waiting for news about a missing family member or friend. I feel guilty for going about my normal routines today, guilty that my life hasn’t been directly affected, but also happy that it wasn’t us…and some more guilt for being so happy about that.

Edited to add a link to a pretty good editorial on the subject: Nick Coleman: Public anger will follow our Sorrow

Can I have one?

Last night just before bedtime The Boy emerged from our bedroom holding something in his hand. He held it up to T and asked, “Can I have one?” T looked at it and said “no, you should really try to avoid touching those for the rest of your life.” The Boy was confused, I piped in to tell him that it was mine, and that it wasn’t candy. I walked away as T was telling him that it was a feminine hygiene product, I’m guessing there were more follow-up questions.

Just Beachy

We had a fairly low-key weekend planned, so when The Boy started asking if we could go to the beach we decided we could swing such a trip. We decided to go on Sunday because by the time we thought about it on Saturday it had already slipped a little too close to nap time for our comfort. So Sunday morning we followed roughly our normal routine of me getting up with the kids, feeding them breakfast, and lounging around until I felt ready to go for my run. I ran my 7 miles, came home and showered, and the packing began.

What exactly do you need to pack for a less than 5 mile trip to a local lake? Good question. You need to pack much more than you would initially guess. You need to bring towels, sunscreen, swimsuits (which you change into at home), extra clothes for after swimming, sunglasses, and toys (which you raid from the sandbox and bathtub). You also need to pack a lunch so you don’t have to worry about the availability of concession stands at the lake. Beyond that you mostly just need to gather everybody into the car to head to the lake.

We arrived at the lake, staked out a spot on the beach (which turned out to be just a little too far from the water…we learned this only after the sun had sufficiently baked the sand and we had to walk back to our beach towels), slathered the kid in sunscreen, and found our way to the water. The kids had a fantastic time, so the $5 parking fee was well worth the expense.


The Boy qualitatively measures the viscosity of the wet sand


The Girl examines something in the sand


The Girl’s favorite lake activity (sitting in the water)


The Girl a little closer in to the camera


I am quite good at capturing The Boy not looking at the camera



The best part of the trip was that on our way home The Boy said, “can we go to the beach again another day?” When we got home he found a few toys that NEED to accompany us on the next trip to the beach as well. I’m glad we resisted the urge to just stay home yesterday; sometimes the memory building stuff is worth the hassle. I do have to take a moment to say that I didn’t wear sunscreen, and today my back hurts like mad. Apparently my farmer’s tan from running didn’t prepare my glaring white back for that much direct sun exposure. Ouch.

Four years old (plus a month or so)

I apologize for taking so long to write this my incredible boy. You recently turned four, and you are a “big boy now.” You gave up your paci with very little fuss, you gave your “singing Mickey” to your little sister, you stopped wearing pull-ups to bed, and you stopped whining almost entirely (okay I made that last part up). Sometimes it feels like you have been in my life forever, and at other times I think you were surely my tiny baby just minutes ago. Watching you age and grow is one of my biggest joys. You are constantly learning, constantly questioning, and constantly challenging me (in a mostly good way). You are always finding new ways to entertain yourself, and the things your active imagination comes up with continue to astound me.

I am going to refrain from getting all sappy and doing a whole retrospective of the past four years, and no it isn’t because I am lazy (well not entirely). I’d like to focus on you right now, rather than what you have been in the past.

The Boy - 8 weeks old

Your favorite toys continue to be your cars, your trucks, your trains, and well basically anything with wheels. You develop elaborate scenarios for your cars, and you practically jump for joy when you can coerce your father and me into playing with you. I like to watch you playing; I like to overhear your conversations, because it gives me a window into how your mind works. I hope it takes a long time for you to move those conversations into your head, because I will truly miss them.

The Boy and I when he was tiny - ahhh

Your favorite food right now must be corn dogs. I have neglected to tell you that your favorite mini corn dogs are actually veggie dogs, and I don’t think I will share that tidbit of information with you for a very long time. It makes me feel slightly better that you aren’t getting a load of nitrates with each bite. You also continue to love broccoli just like I do, which is nice because now when I serve it for dinner there are two of us who will eat it. Perhaps you could convince your little sister that broccoli, and heck any other vegetable, is actually quite delicious because when I tell her she just isn’t buying it. You also love fruit in almost any form. I love that your eyes light up when I pull out the frozen grapes. Of course that isn’t to say that you don’t enjoy your share of sweets, but I prefer to focus on the healthy stuff for the purposes of this post.

Some early eating

Your favorite color is pink, but red is a close second. When asked you will say that red is your favorite color, but when it is time to choose a balloon color you always choose pink. I love that you haven’t bought into the boy/girl color schemes yet. I fear you will become corrupted as the years go by, but for now it is pretty cool that you like pink.

Notice the pink balloon

You love playing with water. Squirting the hose in the backyard has become a special little treat for you. You are good at watering big areas of dirt so that they become muddy; you are also great at watering the weeds that make up our backyard. Filling up the swimming pool gives you great pleasure; it is much more fun to fill it up slowly while taking breaks to water random things in the lawn than it is just to fill it up. When the pool is full you have no desire to get into it, but would rather dump the water out onto the grass using various buckets and watering cans. The joy on your face as you do this is incredible to see.

The Boy in his pool

Most of all you seem to love the attention of your parents in almost any form. You definitely let us know when we aren’t paying enough attention to you, and you do your best to correct that problem when it arises. I hope you never stop asking me for one more cuddle before bed, but I know that you will eventually. For now I will live in the moment without worrying about what you may do years from now. You truly are a gift, and I am honored that you want to spend so much time with me.

I love you!

I'm not cool enough to go to BlogHer

For the past few weeks I have started to look at blogging as though it were junior high. I read some really fabulous blogs that so many other people also love as well. Blogs like Mom101, Suburban Turmoil, Chicky Chicky Baby, Motherhood Uncensored, and a bunch of others all fall into what I would call the stratosphere of "Mommy Blogs." I would liken them to the "popular girls" that I went to junior high with, of course they actually seem like nice people which is more than I can say about those junior high girls. I would love to believe that none of the women I've mentioned above ever kept logs of the clothing worn by their classmates (you know to mock them with when it was revealed that they wore the same outfit more than once in the span of a week...they would be horrified by how often I wear the same clothes now), or asked a non-popular boy to a dance only to back out by telling him that "I was only kidding, you are an outsider and I would never go out with you." Dreadful people those junior high girls.

I remember the first day of junior high like it was yesterday. I had a new pink outfit on, and the pink high heeled shoes that I though made me look so adult. As soon as I sat down for 7th grade orientation I knew I was not cool. The rules had changed in the span of one summer, and nobody gave me the memo. Cute was out, Guess jeans were in. I had never heard of Guess jeans, and my parents could not afford to help me rectify the situation. My clothing had dictated my place in the junior high social order. I found a nice group of friends in our lower social class, and became mostly content with my lot in life, but those popular girls were always there as a reminder that I wasn't good enough. They took every opportunity to remind us that we were less than them, and it worked. I can look back now and see that they were using their own insecurities to protect their places, but it was still shitty.

That social order has stayed with me at least somewhat throughout the rest of my life. High school was more tolerable than junior high was, but there was still a stratification of the cliques. I was part of the "nerd girl" clique, and that was fine by me, but it didn't stop me from wishing one of the jockish popular boys would ask me out. I went to college in my hometown, and was greeted there by the same jerks from junior high and high school who were under the assumption that this was a bigger high school. Thankfully I transferred to a different school for my junior and senior years where I got to start fresh. My first job after college had me falling into a similar kind of role. I did my work, didn't draw too much attention to myself, and stayed employed. Eventually though I started to grow tired of my lot in life, and I started exploring other opportunities. That feeling that I was less than stuck with me, and it has taken many years for me to know that I'm just selling myself short by allowing myself to feel that way. It really is a cop out, an excuse for not excelling at what I'm doing.

I am in no way inferring that all of the cool kids I mentioned in the first paragraph are like those junior high girls, only that I allow myself to feel like I am in a lower class. I had brief thoughts of planning a trip to BlogHer, but I couldn't talk my buddy PDX Mama into it so I stopped thinking about it. Unless I had someone to help me screw up my courage I just didn't think I could do it. Now, I'm a little bit mad at myself for not just following through and going. I hope you all have fun, perhaps next year I will get over my hangups and just join you already.

Ideas wanted

So I may have mentioned before that I was given the opportunity to do something different for work. I told you to email me to find out what it was, and well, nobody did…guess I know where I rate! Anyway, it turns out that the different thing isn’t as easy to launch as I thought it would be, mostly because actual work keeps getting in the way and I find I have very little time for it. Another road block is that it is really hard to come up with ideas for a work related blog. There I’ve said it; my idea was to launch a work blog to help us filter more people to our actual website. I had lots of great ideas in the plan I pitched to my boss, but have I mentioned that it is hard? The goal is really only to start generating a buzz about what we do, and since we are a tiny company our advertising budget is almost non-existent. My thought was that I enjoy blogging as a hobby (can I call it that?), so why not extend it into the realm of work. Can you say naïve?



I’m really struggling with a way to just give you a link to the other blog (perhaps if you googled the words in the picture above you might be able to find it), but I still have this insane idea that my blog is a private thing and that my coworkers know nothing about it. The fact that I’ve shown several of them my house remodeling photos from this blog doesn’t even wave this belief. So should I just give you the link? I mean attracting a bunch of my friends to my work blog isn’t exactly my intent, but I do want to drive traffic to the site. I am supposed to present my idea to the entire company at our annual meeting next month, and it would be nice to show that we have had more than 4 visits to the site by then. Do any of you have any experience with a professional blog? Do you have any ideas about ways to drive quality traffic to my other blog that you would be willing to share?

Oh I'd never let MY kids do that...

Okay fess up. What horrible things do you allow your kids to do, that in your pre-kid days you swore up and down that you would never allow? For me it has to be the huge bins filled with toys. I remember going to friends' houses who had kids and being absolutely disgusted by the vast quantity of cheap crappy toys that resided in the toy bins. I remember telling T that "we won't get happy meal toys for our kids, because there is no need to have all of those stupid little crappy toys all over the place." Ha!

Well we don't get happy meals for our kids, actually we only very rarely eat fast food as a family (I'm fairly sure that T on occasion eats fast food for lunch), but we do have vast quantities of little crappy toys scattered all throughout our house. We have two Rubbermaid bins full, we have a little car shaped storage bin device in The Boy's room, and we have an entire series of bins in The Girl's room all filled with crap. Oh, some of it isn't really crap, but the net effect in the house is that it looks like we never weed through our children's toys (which admittedly we don't do all that often). Turns out it is easier to have bins filled with crap if you want to be able to see your floors on occasion.

So what is your biggest back-track parenting wise? I'm tagging a few of my friends just to see if they will play along. Tell me PDX Mama, Christine, Kate, Jennifer, Lawyer Mama, and whomever else wants to play along, have you let your houses become disorganized toy stores too? If not, what do you do that you told yourself you would never do?

When I get a moment I will add pictures to this post, although I'd guess you can all pretty easily get a mental picture of the toy craziness.

Overheard

Sometimes we accidentally on purpose don’t turn on the baby monitor, but other times we really do just forget to turn it on. One night last week such a thing occurred, and when we realized our mistake we heard the following exchange (the kids were supposed to be sleeping and they do not share a room):

The Boy: *The Girl’s name* *The Girl’s name* look at this picture
The Girl: A baby
The Boy: It’s me!
The Boy: That is me as a baby, look Mommy is holding me
The Girl: My mommy!
The Boy: No, she is both of our Mommy
The Boy: This is Arizona Grandma holding me when I was a baby, and Arizona Grandpa
The Girl: Where’s me?
The Boy: Look, I’m growing up in this picture
The Girl: but where’s me?
The Boy: Daddy is holding me when I was a baby
The Girl: Where’s me?

DH and I have a little discussion and decide that The Boy is showing The Girl the photo album my Mom (Arizona Grandma) gave The Boy for Christmas a few years back. It is filled with pictures of The Boy as a baby, and as a one-year-old, pictures with his Arizona Grandparents and pictures of DH and me. We decide we need to break up this little interlude before The Girl realizes that we have very few pictures of her in albums.

I arrive upstairs and as The Boy hears me walking up the stairs he quickly shuffles back into his own room. I was just helping *The Girl’s name*, he tells me. Helping her do what, I question? I was just helping her. Okay. The scene in The Girl’s room is comical; all of the toys from her storage bins are either in her crib or on the floor just outside of her crib. Presumably The Boy had been helping her gather all of her toys as she directed him from inside her crib. We all giggle a little, clean up, and bed time is enforced. While we certainly don’t want to encourage these little events, I still get a smile on my face when I think about it. Sometimes I could just eat them up. They are so sweet when they aren’t whining or torturing each other.

New batteries please

The Fisher Price Aquarium (I had a picture of it here), get your minds out of the gutter! I'm sitting here listening to the horrid sound of the FP crib aquarium through the muffled sound of the baby monitor, and it is making me cringe. Eventually the monitor will declare the aquarium chirps and bubbles to be "background noise" and it will go back to quiet, but for now I'm stuck listening to the wacky sound of the aquarium when it is low on batteries. Funny that is just gets slow then speeds up again, almost like you are playing with the speed setting on a turntable...do people still remember those?

4 D batteries lie in wait, but we can't disturb the evening routine once it has begun...perhaps tomorrow night she will have an aquarium that actually emits some light and has recognizable tunes, but for now we suffer.

I swear that aquarium was the best baby gift we registered for and received...if only they made a plug in version so we didn't have to keep paying it with batteries. FP Aquarium = baby crack = toddler crack = preschoolers just like to turn it on and off again repeatedly when they somehow manage to climb into their little sisters' cribs.

Vacation

T and I had the bulk of last week off from work. Our kids' daycare was closed for the week so we took the opportunity to have a week off as a family. We didn't plan much, so the week ended up being a hodge-podge of activity. I have to be honest here and say that dropping them off at daycare this morning was perhaps the highlight of the past week. I love them so much, but they absolutely exhaust me.

How is it that I can long to be with them when I am working, but when I am with them want nothing more than to run away? Of course there are plenty of happy times scattered in there, but then The Boy won't nap for a solid week and my sense of balance is thrown out of whack. All I can think about is the lack of naps, and how cranky and whiny my children are.

It was a nice feeling to pick them up this evening though. I did miss them while I was at work, but the break from them was very much needed. So there you have it...I am a crappy crappy Mom who likes being away from her children.

Remodel: Week 9

I just finished my morning workout, and everyone else is still asleep so I thought I would use this opportunity to post the latest remodel pictures. Word has it that they will be done next week! I plan to post the before and after pictures when it is completely done, but if you are itching to see what it was like before, just click here.

Some kitchen views, with a little help from The Girl:

The Bathroom (the grout was sealed yesterday so we aren’t allowed to walk on the floor)





The dining room

A break to pick her nose

The new slide in dual fuel range


So there you have it, some minor details remain, and carpet for the living room and office will go a long way to making it feel done I’m sure.