Oct 30, 2017 | Holidays, What's going on |
Back in January I said I was going to blog more frequently. I’ve only blogged twice in the last eight days so it’s safe to say that goal is not being achieved.
On Thursday I took Annabelle to the shoe store. I rarely buy clothes for her when she’s with me because it’s so much easier to do it alone. Beyond her Minnie Mouse rain boots and wanting to wear dresses she hasn’t voiced much of an opinion about clothes. Picking out her clothes myself is a train I intended to ride as far as the track will take me. I mentioned she would need new sneakers soon and she said she wanted light up shoes. She was very specific about which kind of light up shoes so we went together. She wanted light up shoes with characters on the side. I found a Frozen pair in her size but she didn’t want Frozen characters. Is her Frozen obsession coming to an end? Has the earth started to rotate in the opposite direction? Next we tried on Paw Patrol shoes and she liked them but said she “didn’t like them enough so let’s look at the other shoe store.” After the third pair (lights but no characters) didn’t meet her approval we went to Target. There we found a pair that her friend at school has and she fell in love with them. They do not have any characters on the side. The fact that we could have bought non-character shoes at the first store and called it a day is not lost on me.
That might be the most boring paragraph I have ever written in my life but it does have a point. The point is I went to Target. I seldom go to Target but I found myself there twice in one day. While perusing the shoe and pullup aisles I came across a lion costume. I haven’t yet nailed down what I’ll be for halloween but a lion is within the right theme. That is how I found myself trying a lion onesie costume in the Target dressing room. If you thought I was going to try it on in the middle of the pajama/lingerie section for all to see you haven’t been around here long enough.
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| I think the socks are the perfect touch. |
Listen. I’m not proud of how I look in either of these pictures but I need you to know exactly what I’m dealing with in the costume department. I have 18 hours before I have to be wearing a costume at trunk or treat so I need to decide on something asap. This Halloween business it too much. I need to go back to not acknowledging the day even exists.
In other Halloween news, why do preschool moms go all out for every holiday? When I brought AB to MDO today I went by countless parents with highly decorated cookies, fruit wrapped in dough to look like mummies and containers of playdough with pipe cleaner spider legs glued on top. You know what I brought to the party? Apple cider. I signed up to bring apple slices for tomorrow’s party and am feeling the pressure to cut them out with a cookie cutter in the shape of a pumpkin. I love a good celebration but it never occurred to me that I needed to bring personalized gifts for everyone in the class on Halloween. I save my classroom creativity for Christmas and Valentines.
My costume is not be finalized but Annabelle will be wearing her tiger costume to MDO tomorrow. The glue might still be wet from the final gluing tonight but she’ll be rocking her fancy light up sneakers.
Oct 20, 2017 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
1. Tonight I’m attending a ladies retreat with church. Raise your hand if this shocks you. I’m raising my hand higher than anyone.
It goes without saying that I don’t generally sign myself up for events with people I don’t know, but I’m trying to make more friends at church. I’ve tried coming up with many MANY reasons to say home but none were legit enough. Apparently needing to be around in case the ice maker breaks isn’t a good enough reason.
I’ve spent nights away from Annabelle before but I still get nervous about it. Parenthood has not been good for my anxiety. I told Annabelle I was going anyway for a while and I would miss her. She patted the back of my head and said, “It’s ok, Mom. You’ll have lots of fun. Me and Daddy will see you when you get back.” She then gave me kisses and hugs to bring with me. She also gave me two stuffed animals, along with their bag of food. She wanted to give me six but I didn’t have the room.
This meme rings as true as ever. I packed four pairs of earrings.
2. Annabelle has started wearing her rainboots and whistle everywhere we go. We went on a Mommy Sesame date to Dunkin Donuts this morning and she insisted on wearing them both. We drove the extra seven minutes to the DD where my friend works and she gave us a free munchkin. (It’s really paid off to have a friend in management at DD. Not that I’m in the friendship for the free products but they are a nice bonus.) We went to the little zoo (aka the pet store) where Annabelle “blew a little tune” for the animals. I’m sure the mice really appreciated it.
3. I am not a fan of halloween. I love dressing AB up but other than that I wouldn’t mind if it was removed from the calendar. For months AB said she wanted to be a butterfly for halloween. She was a butterfly last year and everything still fit so I was happy for her to pick such a low effort costume. Several weeks ago she decided to be a tiger which has required several trips to Joann’s and lots of fabric cutting. Christopher said he’d join her and be a bear. Our church is having a trunk or treat and asked people to sign up as trunk decorators. I wasn’t planning on dressing up at all but I didn’t want to look like the Halloween Scrooge of the family. I decided we could do a jungle themed trunk and I could be a safari guide/zookeeper. Subtle yet participatory. Christopher thinks I should be this instead.
So long, subtle costume. Not only would I stand out like someone riding an inflatable elephant, I’d have to worry about not breaking the fan as I chase down a small tiger.
4. Several months ago we had our neighborhood cookout. Cathleen the tattooed from four houses down brought a container of yellow watermelon. I meant to return the container to her the following week but I forgot. Somehow it ended up on top of the refrigerator holding chip clips, a screwdriver, glasses from the eclipse and army sunglasses. I remembered about the container only when it fell on my head. It’s been so long since the cookout it feels weird to return it now. Maybe I’ll return it while disguised as an elephant rider.
5. How many times can a three year old call for her mother during quiet time? The answer is 12.
Oct 16, 2017 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head and nothing makes it go away? That’s how it was for my Friday night, except it was a phrase that kept repeating in my dreams. “Perfect prior planning prevents poor performance.” Over and over and OVER. If something went wrong in the dream, a voice would say “you could have prevented that poor performance.” It was beyond annoying and I couldn’t stop it, no matter how much I tried.
We didn’t get to pick strawberries or blueberries this summer so I’ve been determined we make it to the pumpkin patch. We had a lengthy to-do list for Saturday but I penciled in pumpkin patching for the afternoon. My friend told me about a farm where we could pick pumpkins off the stems, not just out of a giant bucket. It was over half an hour away but I thought the experience would be worth it. I had done the perfect prior planning so I didn’t expect any poor performance from the farm.
It felt wrong to pick pumpkins when it was 75* and we were wearing sandals! I actually started sweating. AB brought her Easter basket and insisted on trying to stuff too large pumpkins in it.
The farm was free but we to buy tickets to the hayride. While we waited for the hayride to come back around Annabelle played in the corn kernels and took advantage of the free face painting. Face painting is the way to her heart.
Thanks to my prior planning I knew we had at least an hour to pick pumpkins and play in the hay maze before the farm closed. Twelve minutes after arriving a man walked around telling everyone they were closing in five minutes. FIVE MINUTES. All my research said they were open until 8. Christopher pointed out to a worker that the website and the sign said as much, but she said “that’s for the farm down the road, not us.” Because that makes sense. Put the information for another business on your sign. We didn’t get the hayride. We didn’t have time to go back and pick pumpkins but I grabbed a few from the store as we were being herded out. We had to wrap things up quickly and I was somewhat in a huff about it, but Annabelle had fun and we’ll visit another patch in coming weeks.
We painted our pumpkins last night. I recommend painting pumpkins over carving them by 1000%. Guess which one of us spent precious time painting sprinkles on a doughnut pumpkin that will rot in two weeks. Hint- it wasn’t Christopher.
Sep 27, 2017 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
In what appears to be a reoccurring theme, yesterday was not my day.
I’ll spare you the details, but by 9:37 I had to hide in my room and demand that Annabelle not follow me or bang on the door unless she was bleeding. I would have paid a million dollars for someone, ANYONE to keep her for a few hours so I could lay on the bed and properly moan about my throbbing jaw/head and the rest of my life issues. Annabelle has really been pushing her luck with some new behaviors. We skipped the terrible twos but are being treated to a healthy serving of the tricky three’s. I love her and all but sometimes I get so frustrated with her.
Since my head was going to hurt no matter where we were I decided we needed to get out of the house. That’s my newish coping mechanism for bad days- leave the house. Even if she’s not too interested in what we’re doing we have new scenery and it does us both good. That she’s secured in her car seat is a bonus.
Some people are complaining about this unusually warm weather but I love it. Half of our summer was rainy and wet so I feel like we missed out. I love a good Indian summer. It was plenty warm enough for water so we went to the creek. (We went to Dunkin Donuts first because priorities.)
Dr. Sesame said she wanted to be a “water dentist” for the fish. It’s clear she watches Doc McStuffins every day. “I fink he has broken fishtail-itis.”
We both felt so much better after our outing.
This morning I signed AB up for a second morning at MDO. I felt so bad about it I got a stomach ache. I know she likes the kids and it’s good for her, but pretty soon she’ll be 7 and we won’t be able to have our lazy mornings where we do whatever we want every day. I do get frustrated 148 times a week but I like having her around. I felt the exact same when we first signed her up last year and now I L-O-V-E Tuesday mornings alone. I dream about it all week. In a complete 180* to yesterday when I would have paid anyone to take her off my hands, I wrote a check to the school for just that reason and felt bad about it. We spend literally 162 hours a week together. There are 168 in a week so we’re together A LOT. We’ll both survive 6 hours of separation. My life is an emotional train wreck roller coaster. Be thankful you’re not in my head!
All that being said, don’t think I haven’t planned out what I’ll do with another free morning. Think of all the naps I catch up on! Think of all the quiet trips down the aisle of the grocery store. Think of all the walls I could stare at in peace. Maybe I should sign her up for every day.
Aug 26, 2017 | In a People House, Uncategorized, What's going on |
* Wednesday was seven years since Christopher and I met. We’ve been married a little over 6 years so if you do the math we pretty much got married three minutes after meeting. I had a physical in the afternoon so we commemorated the day by high-fiving as we met in the OBGYN waiting room to do a child hand over.
I am not a fan of my annual physical. I don’t like wearing the paper gown. I don’t like being surrounded by posters of the female reproductive system. I don’t like being reminded that my extra pounds can’t really be called “baby weight” anymore. I hate the required exam of the neither regions. I tell myself she’s seen hundreds of people and for a while it helped, then I realized the problem with that logic is I don’t show hundreds of people. I just lay there and hope for the best. The doctor is friendly but it’s weird when she’s telling me about how her 13yo twins almost burned down her house while going about her business. Does it have to be social hour?
I ran into Tuesday Morning after my appointment to congratulate myself for making it through another appointment. I had to cut my shopping short because Christopher called and said he had to go back into work. He more than made up for my canceled shopping trip with the following texts.
I’ll keep him around for a few more years.
* Just when our yard had finally recovered from the patio fiasco, Mr Jim decided to have a new roof put on. They come at 7:30am and cause a ruckus until 6:30pm. The pounding never stops. The dishes shake in the cupboard. My poor garden has almost been squashed beyond repair.
Our kitchen is little and there’s no practical place for the trash can so we have it in the garage. I opened the door between the kitchen and the garage to throw something away and shingles came crashing down in front of my face. I looked up and saw the sky through what used to be the garage roof. The floor was covered in shingles, dirt and screws. I’m so shy I didn’t want to face the 8 guys about it but I didn’t want to clean up the mess myself. Then I saw our fake Christmas tree getting covered in dirt. That was too much. A line was crossed. I told myself they’re providing a service and I’m the customer they need to keep happy. They don’t need to know Mr. Jim signed the check and not me. I finally got the attention of Jorge (not his actual name) and apologized for bothering him, but if it wasn’t too much…I mean, if he get a chance…would he mind finding a tarp for the garage? All our stuff is getting dirty. Again, I’M SO SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. Jorge looked momentarily startled (English might not be his first language) but he paused the whole roof production to look for a tarp. Between you and I, I think they were hoping I wouldn’t notice the mess. As if I wouldn’t notice a Christmas tree in danger!
I’m so sorry. I just told you the most boring, anti climactic story in the history of the internet.
* I took Sesame to the playground to escape the banging. Someone tell me where my baby went! Who’s this kid with long legs?
* I don’t mean to brag (or maybe I do), but for 45 minutes every single piece of laundry in my house was either on us or clean and put away. ALL OF IT. This morning I deep cleaned the refrigerator so feel free to call me Martha Stewart and mail me a Wife of the Year award. Or reward me with French fries.
Aug 22, 2017 | Uncategorized, What's going on |
Viewing: the eclipse. I don’t know if you heard, but there was an eclipse today. The newscasters may have mentioned it 1 or 712 times.
I ordered a pair of special glasses off Ebay. Several friends said businesses in their towns were giving away free glasses but I couldn’t find any. It seemed like a wiser move to spend $12 on glasses than stupidly stare at the sun and be hit with huge hospital bills. I saw directions for making a pinhole viewer at home so I tried to make one out of a cheerios box. It was a failure. I stood in the yard holding a box up to my face and no doubt looking like an idiot. I saw nothing but the bottom of the box. I must have done something wrong but I don’t have much experience staring into cereal boxes. The event as a whole was less exciting than I anticipated but I am glad I bought the glasses and had my NASA shirt to wear.
Watching: the documentary When the Bough Breaks about post partum depression. Some parts are very sad and brought me back to darker days when AB was younger, but it’s very well done and an important movie.
Explaining: the pictures in all our photo albums to curious Sesame. No, I don’t know what Daddy said to you right after you were born. No, you didn’t play on a playground in my belly. No, you weren’t at our wedding. Yes, we smelled the flowers. Yes, that’s Grammy. No, you didn’t live in Grammy’s belly.
Shopping at: Homegoods. I went yesterday and almost came home with a copper pineapple and a sign that says “welcome to the ranch.” The second I walk in that store I suddenly decide our house won’t be complete without everything in sight.
Smelling: my sage Yankee Candle.
Sad about: the end of summer. We’ll squeeze in all the fun we can in September, but I wish we had one more month of real summer. The splash pads all close after this week and they’ve been a highlight of our summer. I’m not ready for another long winter of being stuck in the house.
Harvesting: tomatoes, green beans and a carrot. In an attempt to not have too many carrots I accidentally didn’t plant enough seeds. I think we have a grand total of 8. We picked the first one on Saturday and Annabelle could not have been more thrilled.
Disclosure– This post contains an affiliate link which may earn me an ice coffee.
