Wednesday, July 31, 2013

July: Going Out with a Bang...

Possibly not succeeding at
Monday's resolution not to
complain.
Since I've blogged virtually every day for the past almost-five years not blogging for two (and a half) days feels like a very long stretch for me.  But you see I promised on Sunday to be cheerful when I wrote my next post and while I started off Monday morning totally capable of that, by blogging time... I was not so much (but wait, just wait until you hear the very, very, very dumb thing I did).

You see, I've been obsessed with getting my house clean and organized before Paul goes back to law school and virtually (in my imagination at least) disappears for the following twelve months into his studies and bar test preparations.  And I've been telling myself that the house needs to be deep clean and completely recovered from the sad state it reached during my 100 hours a week sewing fest in April/May when sewing took priority over everything (I think I even dropped like 10 lbs) and the house looked like a fabric store had exploded inside of it.

Part of my problem is that I'm mentally unable to part with any scrap of fabric larger than the palm of my hand because I find myself thinking "oh that would be perfect for a scrap quilt!  Just perfect!" and then I squirrel it away in a fabric bag, like the hoarder that I apparently am deep down, alongside my natural disaster preparation tendencies (I've seriously thought like this for as long as I can remember... but that's another post in itself) where I think thoughts like "well, if civilization ever really does collapse like in all those YA novels, at least I'll have 78 cans of vegetables, 25 lbs of dry beans and a whole bunch of little scraps of fabric..."
Let's blame the quilts for the mess.

As a side note (is the whole of this post side notes?  Possibly.  It seems to be spiraling that way rapidly) this has come in very handy on those months over the past few years where something comes up, like a certain van breaking down or a sudden need to move 1500 miles in two weeks, when money has extra been tight (that is to say, nonexistent), but hey guys, at least I have bags and bags of rice and beans and while my family may be very, very bored, they will not be hungry.

Anyways, so I've been cleaning the house from top to bottom and reorganizing everything.  The upstairs is done.  The stairs are cleared (fabric piles would congregate there...).  The middle floor was never horrible (I do want to reorganize my pots and pans) but the basement with the water table flood and the sewer flood needed major work as my once organized basement had been destroyed as I hurriedly moved boxes from one side to the other.  And on Monday I was going to begin to tackle that.

As the water started to come in...
A few days earlier, during the pre-cleaning assessment while folding laundry, I'd found (cue scary music... in my head...) black mold in one of the previously flooded areas.  Good job hazmat team.  Awesome clean up (I've found some other things... that left me less than impressed.... I'll spare you the details...).  I poured bleach on it that day.  And then I did it again.  And everything looked sparkling and beautiful as I went to scrub the area.  I'd done it. I'd defeated black mold.  I was triumphant.

Until I started to scrub.  And do you know what happened?  The first shining white layer peeled away to reveal... black mold.  And suddenly I was having an asthma attack.

Now maybe some of you, who have more black mold experience than I do, are thinking: "Stop.  Just stop, how can you be so dumb?"

I even thought that myself.  For a second.  And I'd like to blame what happened next on a mixture of my own unfortunate stubbornness and a bit on oxygen deprivation because honestly I didn't even remember that I had an inhaler (or twenty since we have multiple people with asthma... upstairs... I think that forgetting you have asthma is what happens when you develop asthma when you're thirty...).  I kept coughing/wheezing, put a cotton cloth over my mouth and started to scrub.  And scrub.  And scrub.  Until the floor really did sparkle.  And eventually the coughing stopped.  I finished the first room (there are two more to clean) and was pretty excited.

Random picture of me not looking
at the camera because I should be too embarrassed to
even write this post...
I stood proudly surveying it that afternoon, not breathing all that well.... but happy with how it looked.  With all the scrubbing I think it looked better than on the day we moved in.  I'd found a clothes rack to hang fabric on.  And I'd found my rosary findings which have been missing since they were buried some time around flood #1 when the boxes moved out of the box room.  A good day, I thought, as we sat down to dinner.

A few hours later... I was not so triumphant.  I was curled on the couch shivering and sweating and telling Paul that I was pretty sure I was dying and that I couldn't breath even with the stupid inhaler and every time I stood up the room would spin and tilt and I'd start to faint and sit back down.  And of course Patrick wanted to nurse every five minutes and I just wanted no-one-to-touch-me-at-all-okay?!?!?!?  Is this the flu?  The mold?  A coincidence?  A result of my incredibly stupid decision to keep on cleaning after the breathing trouble began?

Who knows.

So that's why no post on Monday.  On Tuesday I woke up and felt better.  And by better I mean, like a bulldozer had run over my body several times.  But I could breath.  Paul watched the kids while I slept like 11 hours (not all at once... let's not get crazy here...).

And today?  Today I feel as good as new (okay still a little sore).  And I'm thinking that this is a good post because we learned a good lesson, didn't we?  Don't mess with black mold.  Especially in a small enclosed room with no opening windows.  Especially when you have asthma...

I'm taking off cleaning (the basement) for a couple days and focusing on sewing!

In random, completely unrelated good news... Patrick's "lost" tooth is back!  It was in fact, pushed up, because now it's there again!  Babies seem to be made to not lose teeth!  Thank heavens!

Sunday, July 28, 2013

What I Wore Sunday: Polka Dots and Stripes Edition

I thought I had my outfit all picked out for Mass today.  I got up.  I got dressed.  I got the kids dressed.

If you don't want to hear my July-is-the-month-of-bad-luck spiel skip the writing and just look at the pictures.  

I'd even snapped a few pre-Mass pictures with my computer while going over the past month in my head because (are you ready for this?) the grand total of things that have broken in the fine month of July include: My new computer (falling down the stairs... hoping this one, with the f and m and h and t giving out limps along a bit longer!), the freezer (not actually broken, but it didn't close and we lost all the food and frozen meals in it, which was a lot, in case you missed that post), Cabrini (the 1999-oh-so-many-miles-on-it Town and Country that we're hoping can limp along for a few more years) who broke down and needed to be towed and repaired (involving the borrowing of money which I do not have right now) and then finally, the blow of all blows, my stupid camera. 

Again.  For the second time this year (by the way don't ever. Ever.  EVER. buy a Nikon Coolpix S01 because not only does it take forever to take pictures and take horrible pictures but this is the second one we've had break since Christmas for no particular reason.).  We do have the store warranty and took it to Target only to be told they don't keep the warranties there in their computer system, and I need to go home and find the target warranty papers and call the number.  Only I can't find the stupid thing (which I saw last week and "put somewhere safe" while cleaning).  So here I am camera-less.  Which is not a great place to be when your business depends on taking pictures of things to sell online... especially when it happens the week you open a new shop and have a huge pile of quilts waiting to be photographed...  The quandary of how to photograph the things I'm working on to sell to solve these problems goes round and round in my head... 

But... that's not really about what I wore, is it?  And really for all the whining I've just done (sorry about that... I just needed to get that out of my system... you can always skip the writing and just look at the kind of blurry pictures...) I haven't been that down about it.  My attitudes really been "what can possibly happen next" with a maniacal sort of laugh.  And I still have this old computer's kind of blurry distorted camera to use for WIWS posts.  And that's what this post is supposed to be about.  So here is my latest outfit. Or at least, it kind of is:


With my-brand-new-made-last-night, I-have-enough-fabric-for-three-more, snood.

Look!  Polka dots!


But then after Paul came downstairs from getting ready I asked him if he liked my new snood.

And he paused.  And looked away.  And said "Uh-huh."  Which is kind of like yes.

Of course I couldn't just let it rest at uh-huh.  I had to push for an enthusiastic yes.  Look at those polka dots.  Come on husband.  How can you not love polka dots!  (Hopefully you'll find this conversation funny.. I was laughing when it was going on.  At least part of the time):  

Me:  "Uh-huh?  Do you really like it?"
Paul (sensing danger):  "I do like it.  It's very you." 
Me: "Very me?"
Him:  "With the polka dots."

Now husbands... Let's be clear.  It's sometimes best not to answer beyond the question you were asked. If you do you might have a painful conversation like the one below, which will just make everyone's head hurt:

Him:  "It's just that... Do polka dots really match stripes?"
Me:  "Um. I don't know.  Do they?"
Him:  "I don't know."
Me: "Do you think they don't?"
Him:  "I don't know."
Me (in my head) "Then why did you bring it up?!?!?"
(out loud): "But what do you think?"
Him:  "I don't know.  I'm not a fashionista."
Me:  "Do I have time to change it?"
Him:  "Nope.  I'd like to go to the nine o'clock Mass."

Another husband note: criticizing/questioning your wife's outfit when she doesn't have time to change is definitely against the rules.

It led to a conversation on the way to Mass about which of us has better fashion sense (neither of us have much to speak of)... and I grabbed a cardigan and put it under my belt and have now decided that I did like the first outfit better, even if polka dots don't match stripes (and I had better pictures but this computer apparently ate them between when I took them and when I wrote this post, so this is as good as it gets):


Oh and Mass.  We had a cardigan-button-incident which was when a button on Mae's cardigan was loose which led to an hour of on and off crying in the narthex over the offending button.

Paul just sent me upstairs to take a nap (because he can tell I need it at the moment...) and I think that's exactly what I'm going to do.  No worrying for one hour.  And I promise to be less whiny tomorrow.  I'll start making a list of things that have been good... like the wonderfully beautiful cool weather we've had!  And the fact that the upstairs is now clean (I'll add pictures someday, when there's a camera to take them!).

For more WIWS visit FLAP!  

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Sadie's Saturday Morning Nun Talk: #12

This week Sadie has been especially passionate about her favorite subject.  I've found her whispering the story of various saints to herself (especially Saint Bernadette and Saint Therese), and she's been wearing her little Carmelite habit, although last night she was able to be convinced to wear pajamas rather than insisting on sleeping in it (I draw the line at taking the cape and veil into bed with her too...).  

"Patrick, do you want to be a Bishop?" has become regular mealtime conversation, since she sits right next to him and even on our days off from school it's likely at least an hour is going to be devoted to reading from the lives of the saints which she'll haul over to me the second my backside hits a couch cushion (Nursing Patrick?  Here.  Read this.  Aloud.).

We've also been talking a lot about the Eucharist.  Whenever we talked about it she would get strangely quiet so I was never even entirely sure if she was listening, much less understood what I was saying.  This week she pointed at the Eucharist in one of her books and said "That's Jesus, right?

And at Mass last Sunday during the consecration,  the bells rang out and I heard a small whisper beside me say:  "I love you God.  I always want to please you."

Then later in the day:

Me:  "Could you put on a dance performance for me and Mae and Patrick?"
Sadie: (bows low)
Me:  "Was that a curtsy?"
Sadie:  "Actually no Mommy, it wasn't.  I was bowing low before God the Father, the Almighty."
Me:  "Oh."

A few minutes later she bows again.
Sadie:  "Did you see me bow?  I was bowing before the most Blessed Trinity.  I was saying:  I will serve you God."

So... She's been in fine form this week... now to get her ready for swim lessons.

Friday, July 26, 2013

7 Quick Takes Friday




For the last two days we've been working on potty training with the most stubborn child on the face of the earth.  It amazes me that someone can sit on the potty every ten minutes and happily look at a Dora potty book and then only go in between those ten minute stretches between sitting on the potty.  

Let's just say the last two days have been a little bit rough (besides the fact that I think she has a bad attitude all around since I've been letting Sadie fall asleep in the other room so she has no one to pounce on and torture until she falls asleep three hours after I put her in her room).  

And that leads me to take #2.


I'm waiting for a call back from a pediatric dentist specialist, who's apparently known for working with difficult cases (ie tiny kids).  We'd been told to go to her two times in two days, first for Mae, since our dentist wasn't really excited about taking on a patient who doesn't even like having her teeth brushed (although she does just barely tolerate it now).

But the other referral... that was for Patrick... and it came from the nurse at his pediatricians office after this happened:

After running wild through the house all morning a certain three year old had grabbed a blanket and laid down on the couch, apparently tired from her rampage (the kid has been doing really well lately... but these last two days... as I said above... just tough...).  Sadie was looking at a story book.  And I decided to lay on my side next to Patrick and play with him, because I was hitting that part of the afternoon before my second wind kicks in when I'm just exhausted.

He excitedly crawled right next to me and got up on his knees and practiced bouncing up and down.  Then grabbing on to my side he pulled himself onto his feet.  He was standing!  For the very first time!

Can you see where this is going?  How standing for the first time is going to lead to a trip to the dentist?



He practiced standing and kneeling and was climbing up my side and looking over the other side when suddenly he pushed with his little legs like he was going to stand up... but instead launched himself over my side and hit headfirst on the other side before I could even move.

Or more specifically, he hit mouth first.

I didn't now it was mouth first right away.  He screamed and I picked him up and started to nurse him since he was so upset and suddenly saw blood.  I think there was a split second when I thought I was bleeding before I realized that it was from his little mouth.  I tilted his head to the side and saw it was definitely him bleeding and I called Paul who was trying to study upstairs.  

Paul came down and couldn't see his top tooth.  I felt a little woozy at the blood and the idea that he'd just lost his only top tooth.  I searched the floor.  No tooth there.  No tooth in his mouth.  

Within ten minutes Patrick was Happy Baby again, ready to get down and play on the floor.  I called the doctor's office and talked to the nurse who said that they would like me to call the dentist.  And then, after getting a text message from Nani, who happened to be in a dentists office back in California, I finally got him to hold still while I looked and saw that there was in fact a little tooth pushed way up high in his mouth (and possibly broken... although it was really hard to tell because it looked funny and he wasn't really cooperating).  


So now we're waiting for the dentist's office to call back this morning...


Thanks to everyone who answered the "when did your exclusively fed baby start eating solids" question yesterday.  I'll admit, I was getting a bit paranoid after going to my doctor's office and having the practitioner there act like I was doing something horrible by doing baby led weaning (as in the "he's going to be nursing when he's 10" comment).

I knew that she was wrong, but it still left me feeling unsettled about the whole thing, since Sadie was trying to stuff food into her mouth at 4 months and Mae was at 6 months.

Hearing that Patrick is totally within the range of normal by still just nursing (especially for a baby with allergies) makes me feel about a million times better... especially now that he only has bottom teeth...  So thank you guys!


My house is actually starting to look like a house again and not like the episode of hoarders it was transformed into during finals/craft fair time.  I'd been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning (and reorganizing, which is really why things were going to slow) and feeling like nothing was looking even near being done, when suddenly the upstairs was nearly done (the living room and dining room were never the problem).  Now I just need to finish the upstairs and then my sights are on the reorganizing the kitchen... and then... the drastic reorganization of the basement before the water table rises up into it again.


We just finished our fifth week of school and I started scanning a city website for activities and then filled a binder page with a list of museums, planetariums and activities in the area immediately around us.

There are university farms to visit, a museum with dinosaur skeletons (not bad for such a little city!), theaters (this year the Moscow Ballet will be presenting Sleeping Beauty, the Vienna Boys' Choir will be here, and Disney's Beauty and the Beast will be performing, all with student ticket prices!), two planetariums (which is good since Sadie is almost as interested in the planets as she is in volcanoes), a nature center, the Capitol and Supreme Court (and an old court house in a nearby town that looks like a beautiful museum) and a whole list of other stuff.

I'm planning on doing field trip Friday's this year and putting all the resources we have here to good use!


Now to make the meal list for the week, load everyone into the car for shopping (Patrick is so proud that he can sit up like a big boy) and stop by the library to pick up a new pile of books for this weeks reading.  I hope you have a great weekend!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

{phfr} Superhero Edition

{pretty}

I'm pretty sure that soon I'll be going on and on about my quilts a lot less... but right now, since I'm taking pictures of them and no longer blocking out the month of May from my mind because of the marathon sewing sessions... I'm kind of in a picture taking brand new shop honeymoon phase.  And it's a honey moon phase because quilts are so much easier to photograph than snoods... you see with snood Paul take three dozen pictures and then I look at them and say "Why didn't you tell me I looked so tired?!?!?!  None of these are going to work!!!" while he stares at me like the crazy person that I sound like (am?) when it comes to getting the perfect snood photo.  

But since I've enjoyed sitting and staring at the quilts for way too much time, I thought I'd share a few of them under pretty:








{happy}

Yesterday Sadie had her last "Sugar Bug" slaying dentist appointment.  You see, two appointments ago  she'd been told that only one tooth needed "to be put to sleep" and that had been done.  So when we arrived at the last appointment thinking that this was basically a seal being done, and they announced this tooth was going to be put to sleep, someone was more than a little panicked.  She was so upset that she continued to cry through the laughing gas and that meant we had to come back again (don't worry, this is going to be "happy" in a few seconds).

After the last appointment Paul asked Sadie if she wanted him to take her and she said yes.  I asked her again on the morning of the appointment and she said yes again.  She put on her brother's batman shirt (which she amazingly fit into) to help her be brave and headed out the door.

A short while later (compared to the appointments with me) she was back with a big smile on her face.  "Did she cry?" I asked Paul.  "Nope" was the answer.

"Were you scared this time?" I finally asked as she bopped around the room happily.

"No.  Daddy was with me."  She said with a smile.  "And he's big and strong."

So there you have it.  I wish we'd figured out that Daddy was the person to take her a few appointments ago!


{funny}

Our three super heroes piled into the playpen yesterday for some play time.

There you go Patrick.  See life isn't all princesses and sparkle glitter.

He's in a Wonder Pets shirt (2T... Oh my goodness kid, stop growing so fast!) in case you're wondering:



{real}

In real Patrick feeding news (aren't you all just dying to know this?  No... Anyways...) he took two bites of avocado earlier this week.  He didn't seem to hate it.

But then he decided that food still isn't worth his time and that if I put it on his plate he's going to throw it on the ground where it belongs.... so... yeah.

  For those of you who did baby led weaning feeding, when did your little ones stop acting like you were trying to poison them each time you suggested they eat something?  I'm just wondering since this is so different from what we've done in the past...

I have to admit that I am slightly amazed that you can be this big while only drinking milk:


Theme Thursday: Askew

Since I snapped this picture last weekend it was quickly become one of my all time favorites of the entire family.  After all, while not everyone is looking at the camera or smiling, no ones covering their eyes or making a silly face or sticking their tongue out and I count that as a photographic victory.

Besides, every picnic with Sadie is labeled as "the best picnic ever."  So, at this moment (since we haven't gone on another picnic since Sunday) this is a picture of "the best picnic ever:"


And I just had to add this picture of Patrick, which I accidentally snapped after I thought my camera had taken a picture, when it was doing one of those things it does when it takes three minutes to take a single picture in natural outdoor lighting, because it's all kinds of awesome:


Wednesday, July 24, 2013

How We Met... Part 1

I've been reading all the "how we met" posts I've seen and rolling Paul's and my own story over in my head.  Where to start?  The day we met?  But as I typed up the post in my head, the way I do when I'm doing something else but really should just sit down and type, I found myself repeatedly referring back to "before" until I finally settled on just starting a bit earlier to make the story a bit less choppy.  Because apparently, at least in my head, to make sense of the beginning of our relationship you have to know about the chaotic months that led up to it, that made meeting the man of my dreams not exactly convenient when it actually happened:

To understand where I was on the cool September night in Larkspur, California, when I was moments away from being introduced to my future husband, you have to go back to New Years of that same year (the end of 2005/beginning of 2006).  A relationship had ended rather suddenly (and I was the dumpee and not dumper) and I suddenly no longer had plans for the night.  I had sat down with my laptop on my lap, tearful, working a retail job after discovering that my political science degree didn't quite have the job offers rolling in that I'd imagined and trying to figure out what to do next.  For a while after college I'd worked for a non-profit in Berkeley, which fit with my super liberally indoctrinated views, but I couldn't stomach the fact that my job was basically begging people for money (telemarketing for peace!) and while I was good at my job I was exhausted and rapidly becoming disillusioned with the field I'd chosen to study (introverts don't make good telemarketers).

So I began to cruise around the internet looking at various sites and I finally landed on the CIA's page.  There was an online application.  

I sat there for a moment, staring at the screen through my blurring eyes and then began to type.  I remember being a bit jovial, a bit over the top and slightly sarcastic.  You know the snarky posts that sometimes slip through here when I'm not in the greatest mood?  This was kind of like that.  I was having a bad day.  And then a little before midnight, I'd just applied for a job with the CIA's clandestine services.

While I'd dreamed of being a spy when I was a kid and had played spies with my best friend who now lived in the same apartment complex when we were eight (and nine, and ten, and eleven) it wasn't something I'd seriously considered after completing a degree where I could receive credit in classes for going to anti-war demonstrations and volunteering at Planned Parenthood.

When I sent off that application and settled onto my futon to drift off to sleep that night I didn't expect to hear anything back about it.

Almost a month and a half later I did.  Late in the evening a man called me to set up an interview.  An interview? I'd thought.  For what?  I hadn't applied to a job in quite some time and was now looking at graduate school opportunities.  I didn't say it out loud though, because I was trying not to look like an idiot.  We set up a phone interview for the next day and as I hung up the phone I thought: CIA.  That was the CIA.

Okay, apparently it's really
hard to find pictures of myself
on the computer that are from
before I met Paul.
So I'll settle for pictures in which
I'm at least not holding a baby
since I'm saving my
"Paul and Me Dating"
pics for the next post.
The months that followed were a whirlwind.  I had the phone interview on Valentine's Day.  I pretty much bombed it.  Do you know who the director of the CIA is, the man asked.  No.  In fact, I didn't know much.  I could try to make something up, I said to a few questions, but we'd both know it was BS, so there's not much point, is there?  I'd blown it, I knew.  But at the end of the conversation he said he was sending me through and hoped I wouldn't embarrass him.  I was suddenly determined not to.

I read a dozen books that he recommended and started to actually get excited about the idea of working for the CIA.  As I read and studied and scanned news sites every night I felt my world view beginning to shift.

A packet arrived.  I wrote essays and sent them back.  Then came an actual meeting in a building in San Francisco.  It was a meet and greet info session at a hotel with a room full of people in suits and an interview the next day.

I moved on to the next level.  I was on my way to DC for more interviews.  I got there with instructions not to show anyone my paper work... but the first address of the first interview was wrong.  My car suddenly had guys with guns surrounding it.  I wasn't on the list.  Social security number.  Last  four digits.  First three.  Last four.  Middle two.  Last four.  The gun was right there inches from my window.  Definitely not on the list.  Can I see your paper work?

Behind my huge sunglasses my eyes were almost filling with tears when I said:  "I don't think your authorized to see my paper work" in my snottiest (trying not to cry) voice.  And then?  He started to laugh.  He called someone.  Here you go.  Here's the new address.  Go down this street and turn right.  Your interview is there.

The interview went well.  There was a battery of tests.  I met with a psychologist who told me that if I didn't become I spy I should become a writer because she'd enjoyed my essays.  And then came a packet in the mail.  I'd been hired, or more specifically given a "conditional offer of employment".  I needed to go back for security tests.

I flew back from DC for the polygraph and physical tests.  I had a boyfriend by then, who said something about it being over if I went and I went anyway.  It wasn't a hard choice.  The polygraph was horrible.  Worse than my nightmare labor with Sadie?  Possibly.  I had an EKG and physical.  Did I have a boyfriend they needed to look into?  Not after this, I'd written.  And then back on a plane.  Home to wait.

The boyfriend and I broke up.  And one of my best friends, who now lived a few hours away came to cheer me up.  I was still working the dead end job, although there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel.  "Let's go out tonight" she'd said.  There was a guy she'd met and she wanted me to meet him.  She and another of my friends and I headed across the bay to Marin to the brewery that he worked at.  And on the way she started to talk about her new not-yet boyfriend's friend/coworker.  "He's just your type" she said over and over again.  And it just so happened that he was working as a doorman that very night.

And that's when I realized that I was being set up.
Okay.... I'll show one picture from the next post!

Sure, I'd said.  Why not?  What are the chances that it will work out?  I wasn't supposed to leave for the job until May and it was the end of September.  Besides, I was nothing if not deep down, a hopeless romantic.  Even if the timing was far from perfect and totally didn't fit with my newly imagined glamorous jet setting five year plan (since I'd been told I'd likely be spending 80% of my career overseas) I just had to know... who was this guy who was "perfect" for me?

Okay so that was a bit longer than I intended on the rambling about the months that led up to how we met... but... from here things will just fly by (I hope).  Because a whirlwind romance was about to begin... and all my carefully laid plans were about to fly out the window.  Part 2 is finally here!  And of course I'm linking the whole thing up with Camp Patton's How We Met Link-up!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Mae Bae's!

The three children upstairs, in three different rooms, seem to be conspiring against me when it comes to bedtime.  You see, after bedtime, I'm supposed to be sewing.  Or cleaning.  We have a routine.  Or we had one.  But for the past month they've had me (and the routine) pretty thoroughly defeated.  As often as not I haven't been getting as much done... because they know... if they can keep Mommy from getting to work for long enough, I'll finally collapse in the bed and get nothing done.  And I'm pretty sure that's their goal.

Still... they're pretty cute while they're doing it.

Bedtime looked like this.

Sadie burst into tears because she didn't want to go into the room with Mae Bae... Her exact words were "I don't want it to be 8 o'clock!"  followed by "I don't want to go into the room with Maggie!!!"  And honestly, after the past week I can't blame her.  You see when it's bedtime Sadie likes to go straight to bed.  Maggie likes to jump on the bed for three hours.

That sounds like an exaggeration... but it's not.

Maggie's new bedtime routine involves staying up until 11pm and then finally falling asleep hanging off the side of her bed.  She jumps and plays happily.  And she'd really, really like her big sister to do the same.  You see the problem?

So she jumps on Sadie's bed and jumps from her bed to Sadie's bed and pretty much makes it pretty miserable for her big sister who likes to go to sleep at 8 o'clock on the dot.  Oh the life of a big sister.

Tonight I let Sadie retreat tearfully to bed in our bed, after a discussion about how I was going to move her over to her bed once Maggie fell asleep.

And then I went to get Patrick to sleep, since he is going through an I-have-to-be-able-to-see-Mommy phase (or he's yelling about it, which was killing my slim hope that Mae was going to actually go to sleep at a decent hour).  But being able to see Mommy just wasn't conductive to sleeping.  Because the second he saw me in his room he'd stop crying, but then he'd sit up and then get up on his knees and try to stand up, a huge smile on his cute little face.  "Patrick," I'd say, "it's bedtime."  And he'd smile wider and bounce up and down.  Which didn't make me feel like bedtime was inching any closer.

I finally made it back to my room to find Sadie obsessing over the quilt on our bed. She always carefully smoothes over the quilt on her own bed before she can go to sleep and she was having a hard time smoothing out the entire king sized quilt on our bed to her liking (reason #125 why having a little sister who wants to jump on your bed isn't all that fun).  I helped her make sure the entire quilt was smooth and she finally settled in to go to sleep.

After all that it was time to finish cleaning the downstairs and I'm counting it as a small victory that I got one load of laundry started.  But the real victory of the day was that in the brief interlude between storms, I managed to photograph some quilts and then, over the course of the rest of the day, got them posted in my new shop.

And that's my big news of the day:  Mae Bae's is officially up and running.  It's going to be baby and kids items, especially blankets and quilts.  I still have quite a bit more posting to do, but the first 19 items are up, so that's not a bad days work.  If you're in the market for a baby quilt, blanket, crayon roll or dress these are all made and ready to ship!

Now to get some sleep!  I'm just not managing to stay as wake as late as I used to...

Monday, July 22, 2013

"There's a Baby in Mommy's Tummy!!!!"

Yesterday as we were sitting in the car waiting for Paul to get a couple of things at the store before we went on our picnic I found my cell phone and called my mom, catching her before she left for church.  As we chatted a voice from the back seat rang out at a yell, hopeful that Nani might hear her:

"There's a baby in Mommy's tummy!!!!" she shouted.

I ignored her.

"There's a baby in Mommy's tummy!!!!!!!!!!!!! the words came again, louder.

I continued to talk giving her a look and shaking my head.

"My Mommy is PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" this was even louder.

I stopped.  

"No there isn't!"  I finally said and then explained the conversation that was happening to Nani who laughed.

Once I was off the phone and we were driving to the zoo I asked her to tell Daddy what she'd said.  

"I said there's a baby in Mommy's tummy."

"And why did you say that?"  I asked.

"Because you're pregnant."  She said in a matter of fact tone.

"But I'm not.  Why did you say I'm pregnant?"  I continued.

"Because there's a baby in YOUR TUMMY!"  she responded.

It was almost impossible to argue with the sort of circular logic that followed since she was adamant and didn't believe that there wasn't (was it that full red skirt I was wearing?).  More likely it was her extremely wishful thinking.  

Because let's face it.  Patrick is trying to stand up.  He won't sit still while she holds him.  Sometimes he allows a kiss from his biggest sister, but other times he screeches and squirms to get down on the floor to be on his way...  Baby fever continues to infect the kids in the family... and Sadie's got it bad...

Week Ending


This weekend began with a hot day on Friday and then I found myself practically cheering as we slipped out of the heat wave and continued into a much more pleasant weekend.  However the heat did get us out into the backyard to play with a new fun toy that the girls received for their birthday and love playing with.  First we got into our bathing suits and headed out to the back yard (this is one of those rare, once in a blue moon instances where it was hot enough that I joined in the sprinkler fun):


Haven't you ever seen a three year old running through the sprinkler in pink cowboy boots?


They had a blast!

And Paul noted that the range on this sprinkler is better than any sprinkler he'd ever seen before!  It watered our entire backyard!


I love my Land's End bathing suit... although it does seem that bathing suits with more coverage are catching on more and more these days, doesn't it?


In between this picture and the last Mae Bae got her hair cut.

Her she is modeling her new shorter do with sun glasses in hand before swim lessons:


And here she is sprinting off, attempting to make her escape.

She's one of those kids that run and run and never look back to see if anyone's following them.

This is why we don't go to the park without Paul... It's way too hard to chase her down while carrying Patrick.  She's pretty quick:


This might be one of my all time favorite Mae pictures:


And here we are getting ready to brave swim lessons:


While Mae and I do the Mommy and Me class, Sadie waited for her class to start (while dressed like a "Prairie Girl" according to her own description):



Patrick had a blast riding along with Daddy: 



That night Patrick decided he'd had enough of sliding around on his tummy and got to work on learning to stand up.  He hasn't quite got it yet... but it won't be long (I know I've said it once but I'm just not ready for my bitty baby to be this big!):


On Sunday after Mass I packed a picnic lunch and we headed to the zoo.  We found a picnic table outside the park first and had our picnic:



Mae enjoyed a gluten free roll that I'd gotten for her as a special treat:


And Patrick was thrilled that he got to hold a spoon (funny... he wouldn't be as thrilled if that spoon had food on it... he'd be offended that I suggest he hold it...):


At the zoo there were some baby peachicks (we learned about peacocks and peahens and peachicks today).  Can you spot the little guy at his mama's feet?  He kind of looks like a baby duck to me:


We made our stop by the children's memorial garden (Sadie always asks that we come here so she can say a prayer):


We sat on the benches for a few moments:


And I got a hug... and then it was on to visit more animals!


We saw a kangaroo:


Walked by the big cats:


Hurried by a tiger:


Said goodbye to the otters:


(especially this guy who came up to look at Sadie):


And then it was time to go (after I convinced Paul to pose by these eagles):


Afterwards we came home and hung out as a family having conversations like: "If you could live anywhere, where would it be" and playing "Go Fish" (let me tell you... if you play with a five year old who repeatedly asks "do you have a 2?" on every single turn the game can feel very, very long).  And then our weekend was quite suddenly over.  Sunday especially flew by!