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We went to my brothers for Memorial day weekend and it was great. We headed out Friday night and got there super late. The girls didn’t go to sleep until 1:30 am, which was not so awesome. Saturday we stayed around the homestead the whole day. I got some brats from Dells Dam Pork Products and the girls got a first hand tour of the farm (Neeners went nuts over the cows, and the cows in turn went nuts trying to get away from the screaming kid) and we had a big cookout over the new campfire location, along with smores. Neeners got into the action by roasting her first marshmallow. Morella meanwhile was in big kid heaven playing with neighbor girl Ginger.

Bedtimes were a big rough, I won’t lie. I was also sick with a bad sore throat and then a headache that persisted until today. I hate these migraines and yesterday I considered going through the hassle of finding a doctor, making an appointment and then going to ask for a prescription to Imetrix or something. I seem to get a cluster of migraines in a couple month span and then I don’t have problems for six months or so. But when I do get them they really ruin life. Regardless, I managed to get out there and function.

We had a great campfire talk on Saturday night with a surprise visit from Cody (my brother’s brother who I hadn’t seen in a long time). Unfortunately Andrew himself did not make it as he was mysteriously in Appleton with an undisclosed friend (potential girl friend we all think). Oh well, we had fun anyway. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to hear more stories because the girls were being stinkers about sleeping, but that is what next week is for.

Sunday was Powwow day. We spent 7 hours there. I didn’t see too many people I knew and just hung out with distant relatives for the most part. I think I will work on making outfits this summer for the girls and maybe my niece. To be honest I have only ever made one outfit in my life and that was in high school. But I feel confident in my powers of deductive reasoning to figure it out. I am also thinking I might incorporate the help of Sharon the mother in law to help me with sewing. Maybe go up there for a week workshop sort of thing. What do you say Sharon? Up for a week long visit with the girls and some sewing lessons?

Monday – Ghost feast in the morning followed by Flea Market shopping and ice cream eating, them Morella played with the neighbor kids while we packed. Actually Tim did most of the packing and I just tried to be still and relax. We drove back and Tim went to pick up Falkor from the doggie hotel in the nick of time while I took the kids over to Emily and Leo’s to decompress. There I found the first tick on Morella (a baby deer tick). Later after dinner I gave the girls a much needed bath and saw a tick of Morella’s head, and she found in her … uh…lady parts. It is the groin area in which we had problem removing the tick. In fact, the barb is still stuck in there, the head and body are gone. We are watching it carefully and applying bacitracin. Sources indicate that it will fall out in 4-5 days. Still, Tim and I felt terrible about it enough to fight in front of the kids. We made up though..sort of.

So I am actually going to be going back to Shane’s for a week on Sunday by myself with the girls. If I can handle this, then I can handle anything. I plan on being way more vigilant about ticks (checking EVERYWHERE) and applying deet to them on a daily basis. My plan is to put the heavy duty stuff on the shoes and the lighter, kid stuff everywhere else. It w/ill be a challenge without Tim to help me, but I think I can manage. Shane is good at watching them, and Gaga Lori said she has vacation that week and will be there visiting (a major reason is doing this so soon), plus we want to be there before it gets too hot. School also gets out on Tuesday so Morella will have a couple of days playing with the neighbor girls all day. It means I am going to miss the neighborhood garage sales here, reschedule a dentist appointment and I had to request an absentee ballot today to be able to vote in the HoChunk Presidential election next week.

I am just itching to get out and about and feel like I am on vacation. Time to stop using the girls as an excuse to not go. They are plenty old enough now. Sure it will be a bit of a challenge, but you know, every day is like that.

When I was sick last week, Tim took the girls out to the park for a couple of hours so I could silently suffer in bed and try to get some sleep.  When they came back she presented me with a handpicked bouquet of “get well flowers”.  Awww, my first ever!!

Detail shot of the bouquet. I put it in a small mason glass jar by the sink window and it lasted for a week.

I wanted to take a picture of Neeners, but she insisted that I take a picture of her pony.  She calls all these ponies “Peaches” for some reason. I think because one of the original ponies that they played with was named peaches (true name Applejack).   This one of her favorite Ponies.  Yes their faces are usually in a constant state of grubby.

I wanted the girls to stand by the entertainment center so I could get a shot of them together.  Most of them had one of them being goofy. I liked this one because it looks … well funny.  There is a story here.

Fat Bastard, aka Mean Doctor (that name used to go to Innsmouth, who is now Sweetheart), Daddy’s Doctor, Arkham

Step one of killing ant houses and colonies on the patio while remaining pet and small kid friendly. Here our intrepid exterminators are pouring soapy water — a job they loved because it involved playing with water.    For the record, it did massively reduce the number of ant houses and ants, but did not get rid of them.   Second phase started two days ago of pouring corn meal into the cracks and on the big city of ants to the left.  Apparently when the ants eat the corn meal, and later take in water they explode.

I took the girls to Monty’s Blue Plate to celebrate Neeners several accomplishments.  1. Getting a big girl bed, 2. Moving out of my room and 3. Spending the night in the room with Morella.  She would later add on, 4. Not being nursed to sleep.    They ordered the chocolate milk and the waitress said she made the best chocolate in the world.    Let’s just say that when she returned with these babies, the girls were speechless.

It kept them busy and quiet for a good 10 minutes which was enough time for me to drink a full cup of coffee before I had to tackle that mess…and the mess that ended up on me.

Neeners at Olbrich Gardens near the frog pond.  I was very nervous about her crossing a small section of it because on either side was open water and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with what might happen should she fall off.

Morella and Neeners in the Prairie area which was just…magnificent.

Noah, Morella and Neeners. We had a great time just letting the kids pick the path they wanted to go on, run and just follow them around. It was so much easier this year than last year when I had to carry a baby or navigate a stroller.

Looking into the English Gardens pond. There were two frogs “snuggling” on a grate which kept the kids pretty entertained for about five minutes.

This is up by the Rose Garden. There is a handicapped accessible path up to the tower and the kids all loved running up and down it.

Well, except for Noah who decided to pout about something.

They just ran in circles down the ramp and then back up the steps.

Kids not where they should be, but they were very gentle and only smelling the flowers.

Ann and Noah

It was a pretty good weekend. It seems that whenever I have book club it coincides with some kind of night out for me In this case, it was a ladies night out with my pals Cecci, Laima, Hilary and Lowen (with little Soren tagging along). We went to a local restaurant called Taluelah and I totally hated it and realized half way into the get together that I really dislike sitting outside when it isn’t hot. As in, I like it to be hot hot hot in order for me to be out for ages as the sunsets, not getting cold, and wishing I had a sweater (even though I did) sort of weather. Plus the outdoor lighting sucked. It might as well have been my backyard porch light. The only good thing about the night was the companionship of friends. If it hadn’t been for that I would have totally ditched the place in a half an hour.

Saturday we ended up at Fitchburg Days where we had summer fare, a funnel cake, played at the dreamed park and then let Morella and Neeners ride the train ride. I was so proud that they both rode it together and alone … as in neither of us were there with them. It was just them in the caboose. We made sure to wave and say hi every time they passed us. Neeners cried at the end and didn’t want to get out. She says over and over “Choo Choo!” She was pretty obsessed with going on that ride. They did not have a carasul so Morella had to settle.

Sunday (today) we played outside and I worked on my garage/patio office some more. Mostly it is me cleaning and organizing the garage while the girls play with water on the patio. Tim made french toast, mowed the lawn, gardened, set bricks in the front garden and some other important stuff. I kept the kitchen clean, fed the girls meals a few times, put Neeners down for a nap’ went on a long bike ride with Morella to a park by the lake where we enjoyed the immense wind and family wiith a litter of ducklings. Then we checked out a grocery store we had never gone to – Jenifer Street Market so Morella could pee and I could get something to eat. She then convinced me to have a picnic at the beach, which we did. I had called Tim and Neeners to join us, and it was so … windy. Sand was blowing around from the beach like a sand storm!

Later on at home I put on the movie Benji, gave them dinner, Tim ran to the store for a few necessities, and then I headed out for Book Club to discus Ishmael at the Weary Traveller. I hated the book, but it was a great discussion with some passionate talking. Next month in honor of trashy summer reads is the romance Outlander by Diana G…something. I will look it up later. I have actually read this book back in Chicago but I liked it. I thought it was a great long length romance and there are several women in the book club who have never even read one….so it should be interesting. I had a great time at Book Club though I feel bad because I laughed a tetch too long and hard at a joke, that was made with physical movements (physical humor is one of my weak points). I wanted to stop half way through it, but I just couldn’t! Ugh, I hate getting caught up in a strong emotion like that. I guess I like to keep those sorts of things a little closer to home….excessively funny and sad things that is.

Well, Tim is in bed now with a pillow over his head. I guess I should take that as my hint and go too sleep before 11:00.

My sinuses are finally starting to drain and I hope that by tomorrow I will be breathing through my nose full time and not wake up with a slimely, dried out, mouth and a cough.

Neeners has been doing okay. The first two nights were relatively easy but the last two nights have been a little more difficult. Tonight is day three of her going to bed without having to be nursed to sleep. Just gotta remember that these transitions are relatively short, and that the long term pay out is worth it. whereas sticking with what we knew, even though everyone was suffering, wasn’t reallly worth it anymore. Maybe there is something in the human body that helps you survive lack of sleep the first years with a baby, and that endurance/tolerance dramatically reduces the older the baby gets.

Thursday is Tim’s gaming night, so it’s kind of weird that I even did this on a night I would be on my own. Or maybe that is why I did it. Or maybe it is because I was getting extremely fatigued of Neeners night time nursing habits and want to cut them out…and get her out of my room. I love her. I love our special time, but she is almost two and the words of advice from a fellow play group Mom whose baby loves to nurse almost obsessively “The nursing habits of a two year are hard to change” ring through my head with each passing month. It’s not like I would stop cold turkey, but come on, she is still nursing TWICE at night…at least. The 12 time, and the 4-5 time slot, not including bedtime nursing and getting up nursing, nap nursing, nursing when she want to nursing (which feels like a lot lately, and that is probably because of her tooth and maybe a milk supply decrease from being sick).

It was a busy day. I made fry bread for the first time since…high school. It was better than the high school version but dense (yet not brick like) and bland (but not disgusting). More practice I suppose. It’s just too bad it makes such a huge batch… I should try making a smaller batch. Work on that or something…but I have never seen anyone make a small batch. The shortening that you have to use to use is such a large amount that it almost isn’t worth doing a smaller batch. Anyway. I still shared it with my neighbors who don’t know any better. Morella and I made cinnamon rolls from scratch. She loved the spreading of butter/honey on the pastry…and sampling it all.

I met two more neighbors. I got rhubarb from one named Matt, who is expecting in November. And a stay at home Grandpa – Greg who I gave a small purple riding … thing too that Neeners outgrew. I also met the landscape contractor for another neighbor and got him to agree to dump a load of curvy bricks on a pallet in my front yard on Saturday (cool!!!). We dropped off a get well package to Leo who has been suffering from severe allergic reactions to penicillin and prednizone. We played in the back yard. We soaped up the patio in an effort to kill off/deter ant complexes from being built. We watched Strawberry Dootcake. We played in the house. I bathed the girls in the morning and washed their hair. Everyone got dressed two or three times. Wrote my Mom a letter. Remember to actually send a birthday card (on time!) to my brother. All in all, probably a more goal accomplishing day than the whole past week. At the same time, my throat would start to hurt after small talking with the neighbors for a little while (also chatted with next door neighbor for awhile looking at plants), I would get over heated doing the simplest things and just generally would start to feel tired. I had to remind myself that despite feeling like a million bucks, I was practically bedridden yesterday.

Well to top it all off, Neeners and Morella have been playing “sleep” a lot together, particularly Neeners, who initiates it. They have sort of been playing at going to bed at night…Neeners will climb into Morella’s bed and cover up, pretending to go to sleep. But the few times that we have tried it she ends up screaming and getting all hysterical as soon as the light is turned off. Morella never bats an eye. So tonight I figured….why not. I also helped that I was also fresh off a night of wanting nothing more than her to knock off this all night nursing business. Morella’s bed has been two mattresses from a trundle bed on top of each other in anticipation of the day that they would day share a room. Tonight was the night. I separated the mattresses and made up Neeners bed in the barbie sheet set that Morella so helpfully provided me. Morella was very excited about this venture, as was Neeners. I brought in the two largest Neener blankets I had, some special stuffies, a pillow (an two small pillows for me). We put her bed under the window and I put safety plugs in the outlet and they both tried out how bouncy it was.

We brushed teeth (and I noticed I need to go to the dentist), got milk and then went to bed. Neeners resisted….and left the room twice…and chattered and then…Morella fell asleep and then Neeners did too shortly thereafter. For the first time, I put both girls to sleep, together, in their shared room. A doubly big night for Neeners because it’s also her big girl bed, getting kicked out of my room, and the receiving the esteemed privileged of sharing a room with her big sister. They went down at 8 ish, and just 15 minutes ago Neeners got up. I went in there and laid down with her nursing her back to sleep. When she was done she turned onto her tummy, away from me — something she never did even in my bed. I figure I will still nurse her down and hope that just not being in the same room with me will make a difference in her sleeping through the night for a week or two to get her used to the big change before eliminating a nursing session … somehow. I guess my ultimate goal is to get rid of the nightime sessions by the time she is two.

Another reason I thought of doing it now is that summer is almost here and with it comes trips to my brothers where she will have to share a bed with Morella, trips to grandparents, maybe camping….if she can do it there…then she should be able to do it here.

Wish me luck. I have no effin idea what I am doing, but doing something is better than doing nothing…right?

That is how I feel today. I feel like a million bucks. Apparently those three or four days of being mildly sick, with a new symptom every day and ever decreasing amount of energy accumulated into an all out war two days ago. Tuesday morning I woke up and felt that heavy, snot pressure on top of my mouth where my sinuses drain, and though I felt crappy I was sure that it was the last stage of fighting off this cold and that I was going to be feeling much better by the evening. Instead I made plans to take Morella to Target to shop with friends and then go for lunch, even though I was losing steam for it by the minute. By the 10:30 go time, Neeners went down for a nap and I decided I needed to take advantage of the golden opportunity to get Morella out of the house for one on one time while Tim stayed home and worked peacefully.

It was at Target that I realized, much to my dismay, that I was actually getting worse and was full out sneezing into my coat, blowing my nose and sanitizing my hand too much — sick. Still, I bullied through. After a nice lunch, we came back and Cullen and Morella played in the backyard while Hilary and I sat comfortably on the back patio. I didn’t talk much, as I was getting sicker by the minute, but since I had to be awake and watching the kids — it was a nice way to pass the time. Eventually Hilary had to go, and it was about 3 which meant Tim was done for the day and offered to watch the girls. At that point I needed to lay down and stop being, and so I took him up on the offer. From about 4:00 to 9:00 yesterday evening – I was pretty much out of commission. I had the worst night sleep ever, I ached everywhere including my head, my chest burned with every cough … just ugh.

Anyway. Tim was able to take the day off and watch the girls. He floated it — no one got dressed, almost all food was previously frozen, and lots of TV was consumed. However, he did take them to the park for two hours on Tuesday, there was lots of book reading, coloring and playing ‘Jump.” Most importantly, he was there to take care of them while I recovered. It was nice, and though I fully intended on telling him to go to work, I am glad that he stayed home. Thanks Darling.

That brings us to today. I feel awesome! I guess I really was sick for about a week, and that last two days were just the all out battle end of it. I feel like I have the motivation and energy to do everything I ever wanted to do. Except, when I do get started on stuff I notice it gets really hot in here — which is a sure sign that I am not actually 100% yet and need to ease into it. That said, I feel like I accomplished tons of stuff today – I made the coffee, opened the drapes, wrote my Mom, wrote a birthday car (on time!), bathed the girls and washed their hair, fed them, got them dressed (twice), killed all the ant houses on the patio (pouring soapy water over everything), cleaned a stinky garbage can, set up an old boom box for outside music (radio only), and worked on starting my outside office. We are going to be spending a lot of time outside this summer and I thought it would be nice to have an outside station set up for things I want to do, like write, listen to music, look at the Ipad, etc.

It is almost noon. Neeners laid down for a nap at 11:30. She has been hitting the nap time sack early these days — from 10:30-11:30 and sleeping for three hours. I was hoping that Morella would follow suite this morning but even 11:30 is too much to ask. OH well. I could work on making that fry bread that I have been wanting to do all week and cleaning up the kitchen! Maybe make a list of all the stuff I want to do. A grand big to do list sort of thing. Yeah.

Welcome back world! I missed you.

I had been doing pretty good there for about two weeks, maybe even three but then I was derailed. A bunch of curve balls thrown our way I suppose. I was doing the main things that I wanted to accomplish every day 1. Write Mom, 2. Push Ups, 3. Planks, 4. Four hours of Ho-Chunk a week. That is it…but as of right now I would have to stay up until 1:30 to accomplish the ho chunk goal, I haven’t done planks in three days, nor written my Mom. I still haven’t sent her Mother’s day gift, nor sent the birthday things I wanted. I haven’t been able to clean up this living room, though it has been done in bits and pieces. I haven’t done much work on the book for bookclub – Ishmael (it’s a bit of a slog) for book club on Sunday. Blah blah blah. I am so full of excuses aren’t I?

I guess I slipped into the slump slowly, but you know, it hasn’t been a full week so maybe it it isn’t a full on slump as much as it it’s a dip. Anyway.

1. Ipad – It broke. I tried everything. I took it to the Apple Store and had a punk genius look at it. He did everything I did and then shocked the heck out of me by simply stating “Let’s get you a new Ipad.” Huh? What? I confessed to him that I hadn’t intended on actually getting a whole lot of help, and that I was actually quite surprised. I said “I was prepared to hate Apple.” And he replied (with his first actual smile of the whole conversation … which was about 20 words after 15 minutes) “I am glad I could surprise you.” It’s been awesome having my electronic baby back, and boy howdy are the girls excited to have it back too.

2. Tim’s job was in turmoil. He ended up getting a new one with a new company, with exactly the same benefits and pay as before. Where he will work and what will happen in the new few weeks/months are still up in the air, but there might be a possibility that some of it will include working from home. (Commence fantasizing about taking Morella out on sultry summer afternoons to run errands while Neeners takes her afternoon nap).

3. Sick. Everyone except Tim is/was sick. Morella and Neeners both had a full blown cold (summer colds, no fever and quickish recovery) but mine seems to be going in baby steps. First a sore throat, then a sore top of the mouth and congestion. Overall lack of energy.

4. Our furnace crapped out on us. Since we hadn’t turned it on in over a week I wasn’t sure when it exactly it happened, but when we needed it, it wasn’t there for us. It would hum the beginning but never kick in and just sort of peter out. Tim put on his thinking cap, looked at the internet, we both looked high and low for a manual, but nothing. We resigned ourselves to call in a professional come Monday morning. So in the meanwhile I put a sweater on the kids and four shirts and a hoodie on myself, and covered myself with a blanket whenever possible. This morning I used Facebook for it’s true purpose (getting people help…ha ha) but nothing was timely enough. However my friend Amy’s suggestion got my ball rolling by giving me someone to call and get quotes. It was a rough start but I soon found my old planning/finding the best self back in action. I called three places before I settled on General Heating and Air. The price was higher than one, and lower than another (but not by much) but they had the added benefit of confidence that it was a simple problem, and perhaps most importantly, were able to come by this afternoon. Everyone else told me tomorrow morning, on the night we get a frost advisory. It would have been such an uncomfortable night, and especially morning around here without that warm toasty furnace.

So the problem with the furnace was that the capacitor was dead. The dude (who was extremely kid and dog friendly) had an extra (little more powerful in the car) and replaced it all in a half an hour. I should mention he was also able to start the furnace without it by giving the motor a little push with his screw driver. Since I couldn’t imagine going downstairs with a screwdriver to push start our furnace motor everytime I wanted it to warm up in here, I was glad to pay him to fix it. In the end total cost was $182. Not too bad…the replacement part itself was $80. I swear I felt warm tingles as the house warmed up those extra six degrees.

5. I covered my seedlings and plants tonight to protect against the frost. After losing almost half of my plants to the first round…rather, they took quite a beating, I don’t want to do that again. It might actually kill the ones that scrapped by.

6. Perhaps the one I don’t want to talk about the most, is the one that has been weighing heavily on my mind and that is thinking about losing a lot of my family in such a short amount of time. Grandma, Aunt Janice, Aunt Diana, Choka Don, and Dad …. then I feel bad for feeling bad considering that my brother Andrew lost that, plus his other grandparents in that same time span.

My Ipad is broken. I have tried everything in the troubleshooting website but I just can’t get it to work after the last fail (the 4th time). It turns to a black screen with a white apple on it and nothing happens, even turning of it off is difficult (you have to do a hard power off). So this morning I am going to take the Ipad over to the west side apple store to have a “genius” look at it. I hope that they can figure out what is wrong with it. I love this stupid thing so much. So much for Apple being such a wonderful product. I can’t think of my PC stuff crapping out after only one year, and if it did then I was still able to fix it or figure out how to fix it.

Maybe I will stop at H&M too. I could use a new shirt….but doing so with the kids? Ugh. That just strikes me as one of those stores where the employees don’t appreciate adorable children running around screaming their fool heads off like they do at say…Walmart or ShopKo.

Yesterday was interesting. The morning I set up a play date with a couple other kids to go to the Fireman’s Park in Monona (So little kid friendly since the kids aren’t quite ready for Dream Park). One of the Dad’s brought his water table, and I brought a camping jug full of water and we let the kids go at it. It was a brilliant idea really. They were all standing around it quietly playing for almost an hour before going off to do other things. That camping jug reminded me of camping and wondering if this is the year that we do it. I talked about doing a camping weekend with the Dad over in Token Creek. That way if it is too bad with the kids then we can all go home for the night and then just go back the next day. Baby steps camping. The other thing it reminded me was that we still have Sarah and Dave’s watering jug. They had kids the same time we did, so they haven’t been camping ready yet either…but is now the time? Are the kids old enough to hack it? Are WE experienced enough with kids to hack it?

After the play date an an outfit change for Neeners, we headed downtown in the sweltering head to meet a cousin of mine for lunch. He had called that morning and we set up a meeting for Noodles. There we lingered over lunch for over an hour while the worst of the first storm passed. I am glad that we were there because the car was in a parking garage and safe from any hail. I later moved the car into the garage (not an easy thing to do considering all the treasures we have) but the second storm that passed through wasn’t that powerful, and not worth the effort. After lunch we stopped in Little Luxeries so Morella could get some chokables and Neeners could throw a tantrum about not getting chokeables. Went home, watched a TV show (Strawberry Shortcake), putzed and then Neeners was ready for a long over due nap.

It was still thunderstorming, but she was tired, and so was Morella but she didn’t want to be alone. I told Morella she should lay down with us for a few minutes to take a break. It was then that a miracle happened….BOTH kids feel asleep, in my bed at the same time. This has never happened before. So I took pictures to document the phenomenon. Oh hey I could show you that and then I gotta get out of here.

Easter Egg hunting at America’s Best. Check out Morella’s ridiculous basket size…and yet that is all we could find. Better than a pillow case.

And now because I am running out of time and if I don’t post this, I probably won’t. I will simply label the following pictures as….

Snapshots. Life in Moments.

So Neeners has an incisor on the bottom right side of her mouth coming in…glacially slow. Seriously this is taking forever. Looking at it this morning I see that the second sharp part of the tooth has now made an appearance is a white nub under the gum, but nothing is broken through yet. Meanwhile Neeners has been such a beast the last couple of days. Tim gave her tylenol this morning after giving me one of the worst nights sleep yet, and it did nothing. Well, nothing that I could tell. She proceeded to throw tantrums over having her jammies on, changing her poopy diaper, putting a dress on, taking it off, putting a onsie on, not having me carrying her around everywhere, not sitting close enough to her while watching morning TV, not liking any of the food options I offered to her through the morning. She did eventually eat a lot of cheese and some lunch meat while Morella put away a sandwich. I had given them strawberries and cream oatmeal this morning but they hated it. Tim bought the fancy, healthy looking version of it and they want the cheap mushy version. I thought it was good. I guess I will bring it with me to Shane’s to stock the cupboards for grown up food.

There was a point that Neeners constant screaming grated on Morella’s nerves and she started whining and screaming louder, and that was the straw that broke Mommy’s back. I finished giving Morella milk, and said I was going to my room until they stopped crying for a few seconds. I went to my room, shut the door and made the bed, put away some clothes — all while listening to a cacophony of howls on the other side of the door. After about 5 minutes, they both ran out of steam … and stopped. I opened the door and picked up Neeners, and escorted Morella back to the kitchen to make second breakfast, and sit with Neeners on my lap while she refused all sorts of food options. Seriously.

It was about then that I decided we weren’t going to be leaving the house today. It is gloomy and thunderstormy outside, and the house is a mess. Once I make a decision to not go anywhere, it frees up being able to clean and organize. I cleaned the bathroom (boy howdy did it need that) with some “help”, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher with the weekend dishes, wrote a long letter to my Mom after putting Neeners down and letting Morella play with the Ipad, talked to the lawyer for a half an hour, talked with Emily and agreed to baby sit next Wednesday, and wished for someone to push down on my back to provide some counter pressure to the aches and pains I get with a 26 pound toddler laying on my chest all night.

Mothers day weekend was very nice. I got my new camera (Thanks for the suggestion Heather!) and I love, love, love it. It’s slim and compact and takes way better pictures than my 5 1/2 year old digital one. I can’t wait to upload some of them to look at them closer. I can see maybe why people are able to throw up nice pictures online to accompany their blog posts—it is easy if they have a good camera that doesn’t need an hour of futzing to get the lighting right for one picture. I will work on throwing some of those up later. I gotta download them to the computer and resize.

Boy I am hungry right now. All I had for dinner was a biscotti and the last bite of Morella’s sandwich washed down with a lot of coffee. On one hand it is good to be hungry because 1. i am overweight and 2. it gives me the inspiration to actually cook food. Inspiration in cooking is something I have been seriously lacking in the last couple of … months? It is just no fun when I have to decide between listening to howls that I put a crabby toddler down or doing it one handed.

I didn’t get any of the good person things I wanted to do, like send birthday cards and presents, mother’s day cards and presents, blah blah blah. Instead I just called my Mom on Saturday and apologized for there being nothing in the mail on Saturday…or Monday…and wrote a letter saying it won’t be tomorrow either. The birthday cards I can send late because I feel like birthdays get a month wiggle room in either direction. Special days like Mother’s day should be as close to the date as possible. Speaking of mother’s day, I was looking at a picture I have of me and my grandmother hanging up in the office. I was a sullen teenager with a bleach tie dyed shirt and overbig, welfare glasses sitting next to my grandmother on her sofa in the trailer. She is holding a stuffed grey bear that my brother and I had gotten her for Mother’s day that morning. Shane said he didn’t know what to get her, and I said I thought old people liked stuffed animals, so that is what we had decided on.

Now when I look at that photo I think “Holy cow was Grandma a gracious person to be excited about that stupid stuffed bear.” Really, if I got a stuffed animal right now a gift I would have NO idea what to do with it. I guess be excited about it and then put it in the kids room..except what if I was old? Could I regift it to my grandkids …but what if it was they who gifted it to me to begin with? Gah. I guess I would have to hold on to it and keep it in a ‘in case any kids come over’ box. But then again, maybe what really matters is that it served as a reminder that we did care about and love her whenever she looked at it.

This weekend was good in that it was perfectly paced. It didn’t go too fast or too slow, and I didn’t wish for another day. I think that tends to happen on weekends where we have to travel for a whole day. We went for breakfast on Sunday at Hyvee. They were gracious enough to keep the buffet open a little longer for us since we were so late, they cut me a deal on Morella’s food and they gave the girls a free juice to split. Seriously, the folks at Hyvee are SO nice to my children and us and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I should probably write something nice to the company about what awesome staff they have at the cafeteria. Hey good idea. After that we looked at the flowers in the garden area, didn’t buy anything but it smelled incredible. Then we came home and suffered more tears, tantrums and meltdowns from overtired girls about villainous bugs flying around out side and menacing ants on the side walk before forcing a family naptime. Thankfully they both went down for about three hours and it gave Tim and I glorious time to study ho chunk, chat and just … enjoy the silence.

Speaking of silence I am constantly getting interrupted from Morella who apparently can’t use the Ipad on her own anymore, and Neeners who just woke up from her nap. Time to start the second half of the day putzing around and creating dinner from thin air. Today is one of those days that I could really use a personal assistant.