Two more days of maternity pants

Woohoo! My OB scheduled me for an induction on Friday morning, 6am. I can't tell you how glad I am that I will:

1. likely not have a baby born on April 1st, and

2. be able to burn pack up all my maternity clothing mere hours from now.

Progress?

The girls slept in the same room for nap time today. For approximately 3 hours. Granted, I was in there with them for the first hour, keeping them quiet, and we had just spent an hour at the kid's gym where they ran and jumped and bounced and so they might have been a teensy bit tired.

Now, it is almost 8:30pm and their room is suspiciously quiet. I left them in there together about 10 minutes ago, and I haven't yet heard the typical giggling and raucousness that is usually present at this hour. Hmmm.

I think it best not to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'll just sit downstairs quietly and sip my tea in peace. Mmmmm.

Living it up in Tucson

Tim has a conference this week in Tucson, so we all drove down together to see family and friends. So far the days have been packed. The drive here was slightly miserable, and is giving me second thoughts on doing it again next month without Tim, but we are having a great time here, so it was worth it.

I forgot my camera cable, so unless I Tim can find some way for me to download pictures off the camera, I'll have to save the photos until next week.

We went to Apple Annie's to get pumpkins on Sunday. Our car looks like CSI: had it in their shop for a week: the layer of dust coating the paint has brought out the tiny fingerprints that are covering all low-lying surfaces. But I digress. The pumpkin picking was fun. It was hot, so we kept it short, but the girls LOVED riding on the tractor-pulled hay wagon and playing in the corn-filled tub.

We've also spent time with my sister and her family, and the girls got to go back to their old school today. I was in heaven. I ran all sorts of quick errands that truly were quick! No buckling of small seatbelts! No whining! No back-and-forth about who got to play with the magnet doodle pad! I even had a peaceful, quiet lunch with a friend. And the girls and I were so happy to see each other when I picked them up.

Tonight I get to go to my old squadron's coffee and see many more friends. God I love vacation.

Secrets to a stress-free morning

One of the best things that can happen is for Tim to be able to take Kate to school in the morning. It seems simple, but it's so so big. I don't have to scramble to time everything just right. Claire can go down for a nap whenever she feels like it. I don't have to drag a crabby baby across town, into daycare and back again, and drive her home as she falls asleep. And! And then I can use my free time for more fun or more productive things. Like having the cable guy come over to tell me that yes, we probably need a new cable box because "that's weird, it's not working". And then I can re-prioritize, knowing that I will lose my cable box in the morning, and sit down and watch last week's CSI: episode that I had recorded. I can drink my coffee in peace, and wait for the steam cleaner to heat up so I can mop the floors. All of this while the house is silent. Aaaah.

After that I can chase McLaren around the house with my camera, trying to capture cute poses and those adorable patent leather shoes.

Ms. Grumpy pants.

The best shot of the shoes so far. In any event, they are Circo from Target. Go buy some, quick before they're gone!

Oh, crap. Also, cake.

Today is my birthday. I'm 24. Ish. Tim went in early today so he could come home at a reasonable hour and help Kate make a birthday cake for me.

First we add the eggs.

Then we add the butter.

Next we mix it by hand a little bit.
This is so much fun!

Then we lick the spatula.

The cake turned out great; even McLaren got to try a bite. She loved it, of course. She is my daughter.

For my birthday, Tim got me some flight time with my old instructor. Awesome! Also: crap! I haven't flown in almost 2 years. I haven't studied in almost 2 and a half years. My instructor is pretty busy, but she has some time available on Friday. We're doing Thanksgiving on Friday. Long story, but we are. Now you see my dilemma. My medical isn't current, so I can't get my landings in with her and call it good; I've got to fly with her in the plane. But this is also a great opportunity to take family flying...so I'll be keeping you posted. Thank you for the awesome birthday present, Tim! And for keeping me on my toes.

My last flight was in a Great Lakes, February 2006.

Who's your secret mommy crush?

The Today Show. It's a bit of a back and forth discussion every morning:

Kate: "Dora! Boots!"
Me: "Matt! Meredith!"

I always win, unless she's sick. This morning she is painting, so I have free reign over the TV. Today they discussed secret mommy crushes. The number one category was Hollywood actors. I agree: mine are probably Nick Stokes (CSI:) and Jack Carter (Eureka). Who are your secret mommy crushes? I promise not to tell.

Crack, teeth and family time

We didn't turn the computer on yesterday. When is the last time you did that? I spent very little time surfing the internet over the weekend, and then just decided to (gah!) not turn the computer on yesterday. I think the internet is sort of like crack for me. I turn the desktop on in the morning, and it hums at me, beckoning. Well, I tried to go a day without it, and I survived! It was quite nice, actually. No headlines to stories that won't get read, no random blog reading (of course, this means I have lots of blogs to catch up on today), no wasted time reading movie reviews of flicks I'll never see, no flipping through emails that I need to respond to. Instead, we swam, watched college football, played with the girls, worked on Claire's walking skills (I know, she's not even crawling yet), cleaned house, and got a lot of stuff done.

Claire has her first tooth! I noticed it on Saturday; it's her bottom front right one. And the left one next to it is just about to break the skin, too. And, while she was doing her silly snorty-nose thing this morning, I saw what I think are the top two (2!) teeth just under the surface. I have no idea how she is sleeping through the night, what with all those teeth just about ready to pop out.

For those interested in the follow-up to the banana story from last week, here it is: she kept it all down! Then yesterday I gave her some avocado, and it stayed down too. She didn't have much of those foods, so I'm still taking her in on Thursday for her upper-GI scan, but I'm hopeful that she's fine and will stop barfing at the sight of solid food soon. Maybe she just doesn't like rice cereal. And who can blame her? That stuff looks gross.

Kate started pre-school today. Really it's just daycare, but I feel better calling it pre-school. I'm a stay-at-home mom (who is never home) and now I'm farming my eldest daughter out to daycare pre-school twice a week for 3-4 hours. She had fun today, playing with other kids and other toys. I think she gets bored here. She is now trying to get Claire to play with her, which is so cute, but so sad since Claire just has no clue how to play yet.

I didn't get a lot of stuff done while she was gone; Claire had swim lessons and I had to get on the internet and make sure it was still there. But I'm hopeful for tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll get more stuff done.

Kate's Dilla

Do I get some, too?

Aah, the confusing life of toddlers. We have had bean and cheese quesadillas for lunch for the past couple of days, and Kate has been trying to say 'quesadilla'. But she thinks I'm saying "Kate's dilla", so she points at my plate and says, "Mommy dilla" and points at her own plate and says, "Kate dilla". Adorable.

Kate's dilla.

And that about sums up our excitement for the past few days. Which is really kind of nice, actually. I'm going to go enjoy the unexcitement right now and maybe read a book that doesn't have pictures.

Getting into a Groove

It took about a week of Tim being gone for Kate and McLaren to get over it and start acting like grown-ups about the whole thing. This morning they slept in until 7:20am (hallelujah!) and both are now napping like they usually do, which is quite well. I really don't know whether their change in behavior was due to Tim being gone or teething or being crabby or me not giving in to Kate wanting to eat brownies for lunch and Claire wanting some of my curry chicken and not getting any. Really. They are babies, after all. But all seems to be right in the world again, and I am so very GLAD.

One thing I'm not so glad about is that Kate got onto the computer this morning and now the menu that used to be at the bottom of my computer is at the top of my screen, and I'm having some trouble adjusting. But since that's the worst thing that has happened today, I'll take it and stop whining.

Poor Claire, though. She is not all that fond of her oatmeal, even though I'm mixing a little apple juice in with it. I held her on my lap this afternoon while Kate and I ate lunch, and her little legs were going a mile a minute, and her arms were moving at the same time and she was making all kinds of cooing noises to let me know that she wanted some of that chicken, thank you very much. I think she actually sighed when I put the last bite in my mouth. I'd let her try it, but I really don't think she'd like it and I'm pretty certain it would upset her little tummy. Not that that sort of thing has stopped me before. But curry chicken at 4mo is just not right.

Kate tries to drive away before I can get her swimsuit on.

Aaah

Naptime, 12 weeks.

Can you hear it? The contentment in my voice? That serenity can only come with a good night's sleep, and that's what I got last night. Claire slept straight through from 10pm until I woke her up at 7:45am this morning. Say it with me: WOOHOO! She turns 12 weeks today, and I guess she decided that sleep was better than eating. I must say that I can usually agree with her on that one.

Tim had to sit Top 3 at 6am, so I woke up just after 5am when he was getting ready, so I didn't get to sleep in exactly. But I did have more than 2 hours of me-time before the kids got up at 7:30 and 7:45. I would have let them sleep a little longer, but it was co-op day and I had to get them ready so I could drop them BOTH off with Lisa and Shonda while I went to Target BY MYSELF. =)

Kate found McLaren's pants in the living room and put them on. "What?"

Revitalized

Kate can now open our door. She's wearing a dress of mine from when I was 3. Yes, she is only 17 months.

Kate plays with matches.

Sleep. It is a magical thing, something that I have lacked for oh, about 5 1/2 weeks now. But last night I think I got some of the best sleep I've gotten in weeks. Claire is still eating about every 3 hours, but I think she's on the verge of dropping a feeding. Yahoo. She woke up around 1:15am and cried until I sat up in bed, mere seconds later. Then all was quiet again. Yeehaw, I'm going back to sleep! She did wake up again about 45 minutes later, but that was a whole extra 45 minutes of blissful sleep for me. She did the same thing around 4:15am, not needing to actually eat until 5am. Then, then, both kids slept until almost 8am. Big sigh of contentment here.

I feel like I can do just about anything. I am so well-rested (comparatively) that I hardly know what to do with myself. So I'm blogging. I ought to be doing laundry, picking up all the toys in the living room so one can actually walk to the sofa, writing thank you notes, or any number of other things. But that can wait. I'm taking a break.

Have you heard about this? Washington state's interscholastic activities association's director (sports authority) wants to ban booing at sports events. Are you kidding?