Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Unexpected Shortened Work Day

I got the call yesterday from the sitter that working moms dread....“your son threw up”. Luckily, I have an awesome sitter who said that she would watch him for the next couple hours and give me a call later if he does it again (doesn’t she rock?!). Well, around 12:30 she called back and said that he had thrown up a total of 5 times, so I told her I was on my way! I picked the kids up (my daughter was very happy to see me!) and took them home. I took my son up to his crib and he went right to sleep. I gave my daughter lunch and then she took a nap…they both slept for two hours! When my son woke up, he kept pointing to the sippy cups and saying “dink”. So I bit the bullet and gave him a little bit of water. 45 minutes later I realized that he had kept it down, and he was ready to go back to bed. When he woke up he wanted more water, and we gave him some banana and wafer cookies (no plain crackers in the house). He kept it all down! So basically, my poor sitter had to deal with all of the clean-up and crankiness and I just had to keep putting him to sleep because his little body was worn out. So what could have been a horrible afternoon/night turned out to be fairly easy…I was even able to get some work done so that I didn’t have to take PTO since I left work! Have I mentioned how much I love my job???

Today during lunch I’m meeting with the cable/phone guy at our new house to show him where we want cable run and get our grand total of additional cables and speaker wires. I swear, we know the total price of our house, but by the time we meet with the electrician, cable/phone, lighting and landscapers we will have spent at least an extra $6,000. Oh well, at least our house will be the way we want it and we won’t someday say “oh, I wish I had put an outlet here”…I added an outlet above the door in my master bathroom so that I could mount a TV in there to watch while I’m getting ready…I have hated not being able to catch up on the news and stuff in the morning.

Monday, August 28, 2006

What Happened to the Weekend?

Well, let me tell you, I feel like it flew by! Friday night I got a “me” night…I went over to a friend’s house that was set up for 6 hours of scrapbooking! I love to scrapbook, however, I only do it about once a year :) I try to do it more, but I honestly realized as I was organizing my stuff for my night of fun that the last time I got it all out was 1 year ago! That is simply uncalled for!

Saturday ~ it appears that my son did not get an all-important memo…in our house, we go to bed late and sleep in…it’s what we do. However, my son likes to go to bed around 8:00 and get me up at 7:00 am. Now I know, most of you out there are ready to kill me because that’s what time all of your kids have always gotten up, but that is not the way of our household! The worst part about it is that he’s cranky when he wakes up, and winds up going back to sleep two hours later…hey doofus…just stay asleep!

We had to get the house ready because we had a showing on Saturday, so we spent the morning running around like crazy trying to make sure everything looked perfect. Then we went to eat and up to look at our new house while the kids took a nap. Saturday evening it rained, so we were ready to stay inside for the night when we decided that my son needed one of those Little Tykes basketball hoops. He loves basketball, and whenever he sees a hoop he goes crazy! So we headed out to get a hoop and some pizza. Of course while we were at the store I also had to pick up a toy for my daughter so she didn’t feel left out…I got her this adorable vanity set that has everything…lipstick, nail polish, brush, comb, mirror, perfume (all pretend of course…but she was a little disappointed because she’s used to the real stuff). I have a picture of her trying to put curlers in her brother’s hair! And my son loved the basketball hoop….it’s still too tall for him, but he loves to try to through the ball up, but unfortunately not as much as he loves us to pick him up so he can dunk it in.

Yesterday we got up and went to church and then went to lunch with our marriage-mentor-couple. Our church set up a program to help keep marriages together by matching couples together. Believe it or not we are the mentors! We’ve only been married for 6 years, but to newlyweds I guess we appear to be experts. We had not met the other couple yet and we were relieved to find them very normal and nice! They are a little older than us but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue at all.

The rest of the day was spent trying to take a nap (the kids slept fine but just as my husband and I were closing our eyes our little pistol, er...I mean our son, decided it was time to wake up) and going to Whole Foods for our weekly shopping trip. When we got back two of the neighborhood girls came over to play with my daughter (they are 7 and she is 3…I don’t get it!) and it was so cute to see them down in the basement playing with the dress-up clothes and playing so nicely together. We ended the night playing with my daughter in our bed…we kept telling her she should sleep in her own bed, but we were having so much fun playing, and then we laid down and she would talk to me about what we were seeing on TV, and then she just fell asleep. I love her so much, and the precious times that I get to play with just her are so few anymore with her little brother around, and I just try to cherish them as much as I can. I carried her over to her bed and laid her down and just looked at my beautiful girl who is getting so big so fast.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Doing What I Can....

I have a friend that is currently separated from her husband and about a month away from divorce. The hard part for us was that “the two of them” were our friends…my husband got along great with her husband, and then the two of us got along great…even our kids were great together. The news of the separation was shocking…nobody saw it coming, including my friend. So for the past few weeks I’ve done whatever I can think of to be there for her…as you know, I am so incredibly happy with my life, and most of all my husband, that I can’t even imagine being the in position, so I feel like I’m not doing her any good. But I sit and listen, and offer times for us to do things together. Luckily she has a great group of friends and she does a lot with them, which seems to be helping her a lot.

Last night she and I agree to take our kids to some fountains in a neighboring suburb. My husband plays basketball on Thursday nights, so it was just us girls and the kids. I stopped at McDonald’s on the way over there and picked up some food for everyone (another problem she’s going through is that money is tight now that they are paying for an extra apartment and utilities, so another way I try to help is buying her dinner and stuff like that so that she doesn’t have to miss out on the stuff she used to do). We arrived in this very prestigious neighborhood that has a huge grass hill with a rock wall at the bottom and a bunch of fountains that kids run through. The kids were all in their bathing suits and they quickly ate their dinner and starting running through the water. Even my little 14 month-old son walked right into the water without even thinking twice. When the kids were done with the water they wanted to run up and down the hill. Talk about great exercise…the hill was huge! And they all wanted to take turns with me rolling down with them. We had a lot of fun!

A couple of days ago my daughter asked me if we could bake cupcakes and take them over to the babysitter’s for all of the kids to share. Being the over-committed mom that I am, of course I said “yes”. So last night after the fountains, at 8:45, we went to the store to buy cupcake mix. Now, I don’t know if this is true in all Meijer stores, but at our Meijer, they have carts with the cars that kids can get in and drive in, and they also have a tv going with Barney and Bob the Builder. The carts cost $1 to rent, and it’s more than worth it because I didn’t hear from them the whole time we were in the store! And that’s why I decided to shop at that particular store…because it was late and my kids (especially my son) were cranky! Thank you Meijer for a pleasant late-night shopping trip! We went home and baked cupcakes with baths and teeth brushing in between baking and frosting. My daughter helped out in every step of making those cupcakes, and she was so proud this morning when she took them in and showed them to her babysitter, exclaiming “I helped do everything with these”. That right there confirmed that I had made the right decision to do the cupcakes, even though they weren’t finished until 10:30 last night. I love that little girl so much!

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

What a great night last night! We had nothing scheduled so we got to play outside all night! I got to talk to a neighbor that I don’t see often and the kids had a blast playing. My son is really walking now, and he looks so big when he does it! I just can’t believe he’ll be 14 months tomorrow! Where does the time go?

The only downside to last night is that either Ragweed is hitting especially hard this year, or I’ve got a cold. I felt absolutely miserable last night. The kids were in bed by 9:30, and I just went and crashed. I didn’t sleep very well either…I kept waking up. And when I didn’t wake up because of the cold/allergies, I was waking up to take my daughter back to bed because she kept waking up and coming into our room and climbing into our bed! She’s such a stinker! One nice thing is that my son has “slept through the night” for three nights now! I put that in quotes because I hear him wake up and cry, but only for a couple of minutes and then he goes back to sleep. That will be a relief when I don’t have to worry about that anymore!

I had a hard morning today…my sister is watching the kids, and normally I don’t see them in the morning because my husband takes them to the sitter. Anyway, this morning they wake up as I’m getting ready, and my daughter gets excited because she thinks it’s the weekend since she sees me getting ready. But when I tell her that Aunt Cindy is watching her and I have to go to work, she tells me “but I want you to stay home with me” and cries a little. My heart was broken.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Our Vacation!

I am back from the beach! We had a great time! The car trip was interesting with my son screaming from time to time, but we got through it. The hardest thing was that my daughter didn’t really care for the beach that much – she would stay out an hour or so each day, but that was it. And my son loved the beach, but he still kept trying to rub his eyes and put his hands in his mouth when they were all sandy. So each day my daughter would go out with me and my husband would stay back with my son while he took his morning nap. And then my daughter would have to go potty, so she would go back to the room and say she was “done with the beach”, take a bath, and play inside while I got a little more sun. I’m very happy; this was one of the first years since we’ve had kids that I have actually come back tan! It was really a lot of fun and it’s hard being back to work again.

Alright, time to get back to work! It’s good to be back and I will post more often now…I think my life might be slowing down a little! Ummm, maybe not ;)

Thursday, August 10, 2006

A Quick Update

Hello all! This week has been non-stop busy! Not how it’s supposed to be when I don’t have the kids! We had realtor interviews Monday and Tuesday, and then last night we signed with the one that we decided to go with. She will do a great job! It’s weird because I’m short (5’ 3”) and I tower over her! I’m definitely not used to that. Tonight is getting the house ready for an open house on Sunday and packing for Virginia Beach! We go every year with my husband’s family, and we leave on Saturday. I can’t wait…it will be so nice to lay in the sun the whole week! And the kids love to play in the sand! I actually went tanning today during lunch so that I maintained my base so I don’t get burned the first day I’m there…I always hate that!

OK, here at work I witnessed what I thought was horrible and wrong…I heard a couple of people from a vendor of ours come in and tell our admin that they were here for a meeting. I heard her tell them that they never confirmed the appointment time with her (I guess she was waiting on an e-mail from them telling her that today’s date and 2:00 was OK), and she had another meeting that she had to go to. They kind of “argued” back and forth about whether or not the appointment was confirmed, and then they decided to set up a time that was good for them to meet. The people left and the admin came over to me and whispered “I completely forgot they were coming, and I just don’t feel like dealing with them today”. WHAT???? It gets better…“I never got an e-mail confirming the appointment, but I hate that guy, and I just don’t feel like talking to him today. And he’s not even based out of our city; he’s from a city in the next state over!” How in the world can you send someone away that has traveled over 300 miles to meet with you just because you don’t feel like it? I didn’t even know what to say…I’m so appalled.

Monday, August 07, 2006

An Update of 3 Weeks In 500 Words!

Phewwwww! I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted! I’m so sorry to the couple of you that read it :) I actually get VERY busy with work 4 times per year (when we do our quarterly filing), and the last two weeks of July and the beginning of August is one of those times. It just crept up on me so fast that I completely forgot to post that I’d be gone for a while! No more, I promise!

I can’t believe it’s the beginning of August already….I feel like summer just began! I’m excited because we are going on vacation next week to Virginia Beach (or VB as we call it). My husband’s family has been going there every year for about 12 years, and I joined in the fun 6 years ago. We will drive half-way on Saturday and then the other half on Sunday. I’m kind of dreading the drive because we went to New York last weekend and my son was not the best traveler. My daughter on the other hand was amazing! I packed all kinds of fun snacks and she watched DVDs the whole way! My son liked to scream :( But at least once we get there I’ll get 7 days of beach time! I can’t wait to just lay out! I’m finally semi-comfortable with myself in a bathing suit…I don’t know why it takes me so long to lose the baby weight, but it was this way with my daughter too…about a year. I have been going to the YMCA lately and that has made me feel tremendously better!

I celebrated by birthday last week…..27 now. It’s nice because I feel like I have accomplished so much already…1 wonderful husband, 2 awesome kids, a great job, building our second house….what more could anyone ask for?

This past Saturday we went to the zoo and the state fair. We went to the fair last year and my daughter had a blast! She wasn’t quite big enough to ride the rides, but they let her on anyway. This year (with her tennis shoes on) she was just at 36 inches…the minimum required to ride most of the kiddie rides. We went with two other families and had the best time!

My parents took my kids yesterday for a whole week (we’ll leave for vacation down where they live), and I’m so sad because I miss them! It really is a good thing though because we are in the middle of switching realtors and have interviews lined up all night every night this week, so not having to worry about entertaining them at the same time will be very nice! It will also be a lot easier to pack and get ready for the trip.

I know that so much happened while I was away, but I just can’t even fathom sitting here and writing all of it. Just know that I’m back now until the end of October (my next busy time) :)