Quick 5

Greetings!

1. I don't ever really have a problem with laundry.  I know there are a lot of people who can't seem to stay on top of it, but I've always just done it all in one day.  Tuesday is laundry day around here.  If I do it all in one day, it allows me to wash diapers every other day without feeling overwhelmed.  Anyway, I was able to do laundry twice on our trip; once on Tuesday, and once on Friday when I was packing up to come home.  It was so nice to get home and unload clean clothes rather than bags of dirty ones.  I thought for sure that this week Tuesday would be a light laundry day, since I did the bulk of it on Friday.  But somehow between Friday and Tuesday, we managed to get a whole week's worth of laundry piled up.  I don't understand it.  We don't have more this time of year.  Where did it all come from?  I finally understand why people feel overwhelmed with laundry.  It really does multiply.  (I got it all done on Tuesday, but I'm still a little baffled.)

2.  On Wednesday we got home from our errand, and I opened our front door and stepped inside the house just in time to watch a mouse run from our living room into our dining room.  I shrieked and commanded the girls to stay put, then stomped into the dining room and kitchen, hopefully to startle the brazen vermin out of whatever hiding place he had found.  But I couldn't find him.  There really aren't any places to go, except down our vents, which don't have covers.  (It's on our to-do list, people.)  Do mice live in vents?  Anyway, Lee set traps, and I thought for sure we'd nab him in the first night.  No such luck.  Nothing like going to sleep at night knowing there's a nasty little creeper in the house.

3.  I'm now 27 weeks pregnant, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to put on socks.  I'm well aware that I'm blessed with a ginormous belly when I'm with child, but this is getting silly.  I suppose I didn't notice with Joya, because I was able to wear flip flops until she was born in mid-October.  But I really need socks now.  I just might get to the point where I need Lee to put them on for me.  Which he'll love, on the days he gets up way later than me.  And then there are the days when he's already out the door before I'm dressed...what will I do then?

4.  Speaking of large bellies, random strangers are starting to see me in stores and politely asking, "Oh, are you due soon?"  I just smile and say no, I have three more months to go.  They smile back and move on their way.  If people are asking me this now, then I can only assume that soon people will respond with, "Oh, is it twins?"  or "Bless your heart!"  Mostly I just want to tell them that they ain't seen nothin' yet.

5.  My friend Becky has been talking up the Les Mis movie for quite some time now.  I tried cracking open the book, but that sucker is a beast and I only made it 50 pages in before feeling the urge to read the more manageable Sense and Sensibility.    In all her talk, though, she failed to mention that Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe were in it.  I feel like that is an important piece of information that us regular people should know about.  That's all.


Merry December, everyone!

A Kansas City Thanksgiving

Instead of the traditional Quick 5, this week you get an overview of our Thanksgiving trip to Kansas City.  I wasn't sure I could break it up into five things, so I thought I'd just smash it all together. 

We drove out to KC last Friday.  The girls did fine on the trip.  There was snacking.  There was crying.  There was very little sleeping, unfortunately.  There was no barfing, thankfully.  We leave tomorrow to go home, and I hope we have a repeat of the trip out here, because it was all very manageable.  Of course the trip home is never as fun as the trip out, mostly because the last three or four hours are spent in the horrid places of Kansas and Colorado.  It always makes those mountains an especially welcome sight.

The girls have been living it up at Grandma's.  They've played and roughhoused and played outside and eaten and snuggled.  They've also showed their true colors a time or two, much to the embarrassment of their mother.  Nothing like having a two-year-old meal showdown with a full audience watching.  (I won, but it wasn't pretty.)

On Wednesday Alaina got to go with the crew to see Christmas in the Sky, a firework show set to Christmas music the day before Thanksgiving.  Joya had had an especially two-year-old day, so she and I stayed home and she went to bed early.  Alaina mostly enjoyed being out at night with her grandparents, aunt and uncle.  She said the actual fireworks "made me bored" whatever that means.

The rest of our trip can be shown in pictures (courtesy of my mother-in-law's great camera):

And so the Christmas season begins.  I hope in the unsavory moments of these next few weeks that you remember the reason we celebrate all month long is because God came to earth, and that is a pretty cool thing.

Quick 5

Warning: this Quick 5 is being written with a severe case of vacation brain.  Please adjust your expectations accordingly.

1.  Joya is more 2 than Alaina ever was.  She has destroyed two big, sturdy cardboard toddler books, along with a few other traditional paper page books.  She figured out a way to chew on the blinds next to her crib.  Yesterday I found that she had unloaded an entire box of Kleenex into the toilet.  And every time you ask her what she's doing, she'll call out, "Nufing!"  I think I'll be a little more diligent in looking for gray hairs.

2.  I had my glucose tolerance test this week.  It always seems to mark a big milestone in a pregnancy.  The ladies at the lab made fun of me for how fast I chugged that nasty juice.  My theory is, once you start it don't stop, because then you'll really realize how gross it is and might not be able to choke the rest down.  They all wanted to see me with a beer.  I didn't have the heart to tell them that I've never chugged a beer in my life.  (My test results were normal, in case you were wondering.)

3.  Whose bright idea was it to buy a house?  We've lived here less than six months and we've already had to replace the motor on the a/c, replace a spring on the garage door, and have the furnace serviced because it wasn't working right.  Apparently the furnace was the dirtiest one the guy had seen in 30 years.  And he said that he hoped he got there in time, because we were dangerously close to have the motor burn out on that one too.  I suppose this is a lesson in "You Get What You Pay For."  Because of all this, our lovely dead dead dead pine tree stands tall and brown in our front yard.  Every time we think we have the moola to have that puppy cut down, something else pops up.  It's like the tree has nine lives, only it's dead.

4.  We leave for Kansas City tomorrow.  I'm ready for a week away.  But I'm also slightly dreading the drive, since the last time we drove across Kansas Alaina puked the whole way.  We're hoping that the smoother ride of the van makes it easier on her tummy.  Regardless, I am packing an entire car sickness kit: towels for her to sit on, paper towels, plastic grocery bags, wipes, two extra changes of clothes and ziploc bags (which make excellent barf bags.)  She will also not be allowed to have any dairy products for the duration of the drive.  Mostly I hope we don't need any of it.

5.  I'm afraid I'm not feeling very thankful this month.  I've caught myself rolling my eyes at all the daily thankful posts on Facebook, and I know that this attitude of my heart is very wrong.  Really, it's been a crappy month, and no one seems to care.  But I read a book once where the author noticed that when Jesus did miracles, thanksgiving always preceded it.  So, even though I still don't have warm fuzzies in my heart, I am thankful for many things.  My healthy three girls, my husband and his job, the fact that we have money each month to pay our bills, and my electric blanket.  Maybe the warm fuzzies will come on vacation.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. 

Quick 5

1.  On Tuesday, Joya got the stomach flu.  Thankfully, she only threw up twice and was mostly cheerful all day.

2.  On Tuesday night, Obama was re-elected.

3.  On Wednesday, I got the stomach flu.  It hit me with a vengeance.  Thankfully Lee was able to come home from work early and take care of the girls for the rest of the afternoon/evening, because I definitely got worse as the day went on.

4.  On Thursday night, Alaina got the stomach flu.  She stayed up half the night throwing up.

5.  On Thursday night, about 3 hours after Alaina, Lee got the stomach flu.  He took care of himself while I took care of Alaina.

I believe that all five of these events are distinctly related.

Quick 5

For a million reasons, welcome November!  I'm SO glad to see you.

1.  The girls both had well check-ups with our new pediatrician this week.  He really is as nice as everyone said he would be.  And the girls checked out great, of course.  Joya is still a super tall girl, and Alaina is growing along just fine.  The doctor was slightly concerned that Joya can't walk up stairs by herself yet.  That's a big Mommy Fail, since we've blocked off the stairs at our house and I just never let her use them.  Apparently she really needs to learn to walk up the stairs to help build her thigh muscles.  So now we need to practice as often as we can.  I suppose that means letting go of my fear of her falling down the stairs and take down the baby gate.  Lots of kids have fallen down the stairs and survived, right?

2.  Confession: I've been listening to Christmas music for over a week now.  Not all the time, just sometimes.  Mostly at night when I'm working on the never-ending rag quilt for Alaina.  There's just something about hearing the music that makes me contemplate the fact that God came to earth, just to save us.  It's a delicious feeling.

3.  This Sunday is my most un-favorite time change.  I like the one in the spring better, because it is much easier to force my girls out of bed an hour earlier than it is to try and get them to sleep an hour later.  Joya wakes up around 6:45 like clock-work these days.  She's ::fairly:: quiet when she wakes up, but not exactly.  So we plan to go to my parents on Saturday and do everything we can to wear them out.  And maybe stay out later.  I know that generally putting kids to bed later does NOT guarantee that they'll sleep in, but I do know that putting them to bed on time will probably mean that they wake up at 5:45 instead of 6:45 on Sunday. 

4.  My family has a history of naming babies in utero with temporary names until they hear the actual names.  We called my brother Fred until he was born.  My brother and dad deemed Alaina "Kiki" (for some weird baseball reason.)  Joya kind of got the shaft, and we just called her Baby Sister until her birth.  But now, for reasons known only to her, Alaina calls our new baby "Baby Meatball."  Or "Baby Meatball Banana."  It's fairly consistent.  And I'm not sure she'll appreciate it when she finds out.  (For the record, the baby is measuring completely normal.  I don't know where Alaina comes up with this stuff.)

5.  And because I can't think of anything else, here is a pic from two years ago, around this time:

Adios, folks.