pumpking patching round 2

Update from the weather desk- it hit 57 degrees this morning. FIFTY-SEVEN. 

The locals are calling it a cold front and bundling up. I call it normal weather for October.

You'd think the cool air would mean my brain is fresh and unfried but I've completely forgotten what I was going to blog about.

I blame the lack of brain cells on Annabelle. For the last 15 nights (but who's counting?) she has woken up during the night. For most of those nights, she's sobbed and yelled and generally made a scene about going to bed because she's scared and can't stop her "bad thoughts about the Grinch and the selfish giant." We saw a Halloween figurine in Cracker Barrel and she said, "My brain is going to add that to the list of bad thoughts." After the many hours it takes for her to fall asleep, she'll wake up sobbing and scared around midnight, then 2 o'clock. Hours will pass before she'll fall asleep again. I can't sleep when she's not sleeping so I lost hours of sleep too. It's like having a newborn again. In the Army, Christopher did training where they played tapes of children crying for hours so he became immune and will sleep through most of it until I kick his legs and wake him up. It's been a beautiful time of family bonding. Things are finally headed in the right direction. We've talked to her about praying or singing when she's scared and I'll hear her doing both over the monitor to calm herself. We've figured out a routine that makes her feel safer. She finally slept through the night last night and while I'm still not fully recovered, things are looking up.

Due to the above-mentioned sleep issues, we've been sleeping in a little. We need to leave for school at 8:30 but yesterday I didn't wake up until 8:13. I flew out of bed like it was on fire. I NEVER leave the house without mascara or earrings but I didn't have time for either. I felt like I was going in public naked but desperate times call for desperate measures. We squealed into the school parking lot only 2 minutes late. I don't know if I'll be in the running for Mom of the Year because we made it, or if I'm out of the race because we were late. 

We switched Sesame to a new school at the beginning of the month. There were many conversations about whether to leave her where she was or switch her. The school she was at was very into desk work and the school across the street was more play-based which I like. She'll have 13+ years ahead of her for deskwork. I want her to learn through play while she can. Had I toured both of them at the beginning of the year I would have picked the new school, but I was so afraid of leaving and hurting the original teacher's feelings. I liked them as people but I didn't like the curriculum. I felt like a traitor leaving for a school within eyesight of the first school. 

Short story unnecessarily long, we went on a field trip with the new school on Tuesday. It was to a pumpkin patch and AB kept repeating that she was glad we went to a pumpkin patch the Saturday before so she was able to "practice pumpkining and know what to do." I drove us but the children coming from school on the bus were supposed to arrive at 9:30. They were 20 minutes late which made me feel so much better about my 2-minute tardiness. 

There's not a colored tree to be seen in our neck of the woods but there are pumpkins of every shade. Annabelle interrupted the man giving a speech on the lifecycle of pumpkins to say that she doesn't like to eat the inside of pumpkins, only the seeds. The strings are too gross. But she likes the seeds. We cooked them with butter and cooked them in the oven and then Mom ate some. But the inside is yucky.

 Another day, another goat to feed. 

Maybe if she had a goat to snuggle with she'd go back to being a good sleeper. 

pumpkin patching

Never met a goat she didn't love.

THEY HAD A PEN FULL OF BUNNIES WE COULD WALK AROUND IN.
I WAS IN HEAVEN.
Notice AB's hand on my shoulder. She has to be touching me at all times.

Two of my favorite things- a bunny and my baby.

You'll be shocked to learn that the white pumpkin with carefully placed silver glitter was not made by Christopher.
I know everyone had him pegged as a glitzy guy.

home sweet (little) home

The day has finally come.

It's time for Annabelle to get her own home and move on out. She's mooched off us long enough.

"Ya talkin' 'bout me?"

Christopher found plans and bought the wood for her new abode. It sat in our living room for several weeks due to weather. I felt like we had moved into the lumber department at Home Depot.

I won't lie- I had serious doubts about his ability to build something with any kind of structural integrity. It's not that I didn't have any faith in him, but I really didn't have faith in him.

Color me surprised when it started to come together.

Then tragedy hit. The floor fell apart when we moved it onto the cement blocks. I tried to be helpful by removing the bent nails and reassembling the floor using the screw gun. I had never used a screw gun before and probably won't use one again. I couldn't get the screws further in than halfway. I was not strong enough. All those exercises I've been doing have been in vain! 

After many days of cutting, nailing, painting and MUCH MUCH sweating the house is nearly complete. I still need to retouch some paint on the inside and decorate a little more, but for a starter home it's darling. 

I had visions of decorating with fabric and pompom garlands but I let Annabelle have a say in decor. She chose a safety theme. That was nowhere near my top 15 ideas but it's her house. It looks a little sparse so I'm going to look for a little table and chairs at thrift shops. Maybe I'll fill a plastic firefighter helmet with water and fill in with flowers as a centerpiece. 

Yesterday we pretended it was a Dunkin Donuts. Annabelle loves their "hashfries" (hashbrowns) so I made some out of felt. 

I'm glad her new home isn't too far away. I just hope she'll be a good neighbor.

my hurricane experience in great detail, weather or not you want to read about it

Hello!

We're alive and came out on the other side of the hurricane only slightly worse for the wear.

We knew the storm would hit sometime Wednesday so I spent most of Tuesday preparing and debating whether to evacuate or not. If I didn't have Annabelle to worry about I would have stayed without much thought, but they were predicting the power would be out for days and that can be miserable with a 4-year-old. Had the powers that be announced we needed to evacuate it would have helped. It was being in the middle and having to decide for myself that I didn't like. I'm a rule follower and like being pointed in the right direction. You say evacuate and I ask how far. I was worried leaving would make me a wimpy northerner. I was worried staying would make me irresponsible. After several phone calls with my mother in law and more texts with my advisory group, we ended up staying. Immediately after making the decision I second guessed it and yes, it is very exhausting to me in my head.  

I did all the laundry in the house, filled up the tubs, cleared out the closet to use as a tornado shelter and got out every candle we owned. I stocked up on nonperishables and water bottles. Christopher did the same and brought home more food than we eat in three weeks. We still have so many packages of lunch meat and loaves of bread we could feed the county for months. Most important, we had hurricane chips and chocolates to see us through. We were as prepared as we could be.

Watching the storm roll in with a snack in hand.

It started raining around supper time. By the time 8 o'clock rolled around the wind was howling and things were banging around. I HATED that it happened at night. Not only did I want to see what was being damaged, I wanted to fully experience my first hurricane. I could see nothing but darkness. The power kept going in and out so we lit all our scented candles and the house smelled like the little perfume stores at the mall. When the power went out for good we went to bad. At that time Annabelle decided it was too scary in her room so we brought her mattress into our room. She had the beginnings of a cold so she sniffled and snuffled all night. Christopher snored all night. I was as fresh as a drowned mouse the next morning.

We had some siding off and branches in the yard but we didn't have one bit of real damage. We were so very fortunate. The neighbor's side yard and our backyard are the same piece of land and they had several trees down as well as a few broken windows. All around us homes and cars are damaged and wires are down. It will take some people months to recover. We prepared to be without power for days but ours came back on within 20 hours. Several friends didn't get power back until yesterday. I think God went easy on us because we've already had a tough year.

Due to our status as one of the only families in our friend group with power, we issued an open invitation for anyone to come to take showers. On Sunday we went to church and helped serve dinner. Not many people showed up but I'm glad we tried to help. 

All in all, we had some siding down, some branches to clean up and a few extra wrinkles and gray hairs from stress. 

fried food has gotten me through many trials

There's a storm a'brewing in our neighborhood.

Raise your hand if you haven't been paying attention to the news and didn't know until yesterday about the hurricane headed straight for Georgia. I'm raising my hand.

via GIPHY

It's not that I don't care about the weather. For years I'd check the temperature on the old outside thermometer every morning and evening. I was obsessed with knowing the exact temperature and comparing it to the previous day. I can tell how bad the humidity is from how frizzy my hair gets. Last week I put a lot of effort into keeping up with the supreme court situation so I had to take this week off from the news. I don't know why our resident news addict with every news app on his phone didn't tell me. I didn't know about the hurricane until we were at a playdate yesterday and the mom said the girls might not have school on Wednesday. I asked why not and she looked at me funny look and said, "Because of the storm." I tried to play it real cool even though I had no clue what she was talking about. I casually said, "It starts Wednesday? Really? It's not Tuesday?" I was like a duck, cool and calm on the outside while I gathered information but little legs (my brain) going furiously underneath.

Let me remind you that I do not come from the land of the big three- hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. I come from the place of snow and ice. Give me a snowstorm any day and I'll stay inside in comfy clothes drinking hot chocolate. I never wanted to live in a place with any of the big three. When I reminded Christopher of that this evening, he said, "The only place that doesn't get those things is the northeast." MY POINT EXACTLY.

It may turn out to be nothing but a light shower, but we went to Walmart after swimming lessons to stock up on our normal snack rotation, provisions (ie. chocolate) for the storm and water. The parking lot looked like the mall on Black Friday. People were everywhere. The vegetable section was full but the chip aisle was almost bare. East, west, north or south everyone knows junk food is great comfort food. Nobody wants to be eating celery when the going gets rough.

Speaking of rough, there was a lot of discussions today about whether or not AB and I would drive a few hours north and stay somewhere with power. It was stressful because I didn't know the best/safest thing to do. We still had the fryer out from when we made buffalo wings so I cut an onion into rings and made myself a bowl of onions rings. I don't think fried onions fit into my diet but it made me feel better.

I'm embarrassed to have shared that story.

I need to eat more onion rings and hurricane chocolate to get over my embarrassment.

currently, the it's still hot out edition

I drove by my nail salon this morning and saw a blue Nissan Rogue out in front. I thought to myself, "I don't know why my car is there." It wasn't. I was in my car. The heat has officially fried my brain.

Trying: a new exercise class. I'd heard about barre classes a few years ago but never lived near a place that had it. I happened upon a studio down the street from AB's school that has a class from 12-12:45. That gives me 15 minutes to drive 6 minutes down the road and be at school in time for pick up. I really had no excuse not to go. My experience can be summed up in the following picture.

A kind lady showed me which room the class was in and what supplies I needed. She said I could use 1 or 2lb weights, it was up to me. I almost picked the 2lb because I didn't want people to think I was a wimp plus there's no need to show off all my skilz right away. I decided to go with the 1lb since it was my first class. Pride would indeed have gone before the fall because 10 minutes later I could barely lift those tiny weights. My arms were burning. My thighs were cramping. My abs were shaking like never before. It didn't help that every other lady in the class was slim and trim and my reflection made me feel like a polar bear next to them. But I pressed on and even went back the next week. I've heard through the grapevine that it takes weeks of exercise to notice any significant change in the body. Personally, I think change needs to happen overnight to keep up morale but life can be so unfair.

Listening to: the Dr. Death podcast. I have a wide range of podcasts in my rotation but they were all put aside while I listened to Dr. Death. It's the true story on an incompetent surgeon whose patients were paralyzed or even died after he operated on them. A few doctors tried to stop him but the hospital system didn't remove him before he caused significant damage. I listened to it for two days straight. I got so sucked in and formed many theories. I need you all to listen so we can discuss.

Watching: Making It. Making It is a crafting competition. Each week they have two challenges to create and everyone is so so good. I LOVE IT. It makes my crafts look like they were made by a toddler, but I was still inspired to get out my glue gue and redecorate the playroom.

Bob Herzog. Bob is a newscaster based in Cinncinati. Every morning he makes little videos while he puts on his tv makeup, and on weekends he records himself telling stories from the week or life in general. He is so funny and don't we need a little more funny in this world? Sometimes you need someone to tell a story about how they lost their keys under the floorboard of their car for weeks to make yourself feel like you're not alone in ridiculous things happening. 

Reading: I'll Love You Forever to AB. People get very worked up about that story. They say it's creepy that the mother is rocking her boy when he's a teenager and even when he's grown. Here's what I have to say to that- that book is basically my autobiography. Don't think I won't want to rock Annabelle when she's older. I fully intend to follow her to college and set up camp outside her dorm room. Not that I'll let her leave me for college, of course. She'll live in her bedroom across the hall from me forever. 

Going: to the splash pad. It's not often we slather on the sunscreen in October.

if there's a costumed character to be seen we find it

We've been having some busy times these last few days. 

Oma came to visit for several days and we spent the weekend in Atlanta. I decided that going up to Atlanta is too much of a hassle. At a minimum, it's three hours away but once you factor in bathroom breaks and traffic it feels like six hours. Not to mention a child who generally does well in the car but gets antsy after a few hours and asks for gas station snacks.

We went up specifically to visit with Christopher's great-grandmother. We had breakfast with her on Saturday then went to an indoor play place for a few hours. Annabelle was happy to take on the job of playing while we all watched. Somebody had to do it and she took one for the team.

In the afternoon we went to the children's museum. Daniel Tiger was there in all his glory and Annabelle could not have been more thrilled. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw him. A few weeks ago she told me that Pete the Cat was just a person in a costume, but she didn't say that with Daniel so I hope she really thought it was him.

Then she got to sit in his trolley and her entire life was made. 

While Oma and Christopher had a disagreement about Donald Trump, AB and I set up a little picnic at the Dunkin Donuts table. We'd rather take about selfies than talk about what The Hair is up to.

Sunday we had another breakfast with Great Grandma then went to the aquarium. I love aquariums. I dreamed of being a dolphin trainer and really regretted giving up on that dream when we were watching the dolphin show. Shout out to Lisa Frank and her multicolored animals for kicking off my love of sea creatures. I passed down that love to my offspring. She could not get enough and told me that dolphins are friendly after all. (PS. She is so cute and I tell her so 48 times a day. ''Thanks, Mama. You too. Can I have another snack?")

If you're feeling a little big for your britches, go stand by the shark tank. They'll put you in your place pretty quickly.