Is It Naptime Yet

Not too long ago my SIL Fallon posted some news about my brother Scott’s new post in Baltimore, MD, where they’re moving to in November.

He then proceeded to tell me that he had just found out that we are transferring to a deploying billet. He will be deployed for 90 to 120 days at a time, once a year, every year until we leave. And, he will not be deployed on a boat, he will be on the ground, most likely Iraq or Afghanistan! We found out that apparently the Recs are out of date. They have this command down as a shore billet, which is one of the reasons we put in for it. We have planned everything around a shore command, and now, when it is to late to put in an order modification, we find out that it is a sea going billet.

She proceeds to tell how hard it’s been for her.
Thoughts of my bother going overseas have been in and out of my mind since this post. On 9-11 he was on a Naval ship off the coast of Virginia, if I remember correctly, and it took a while before correspondence was allowed due to trying to keep the location secret. I remember being worried for him but knowing that no news of Navy ships had been declared and he did return home safely.

I really worry once he moves and has to be deployed. The taste of war is bitter in my mouth with knowing my brother will be one of the soldiers apart of it. I love him and I know this will be hard for his wife when he finally has to leave until he is back from his last deployment.
I love you Scott and I wish you safety.

Lilah’s class wet really well. I actually had two actives left over today in which it’s always better to be over prepared than under.
The kids loved bowling- where we had tall yogurt containers and they hurled a big green ball, thanks Anna, at them.
I think they could have done it the whole last half hour, but we had spots to count on a cow I made which is so cute for my lack of artistic ability. I think I’ll name her Darling.
We made butter for an activity and one of the girls did not want to pass along the jar and let me shake it to help. It was kinda funny to be getting the evil eye from a 3 year old.

Today I have a few things to do. One is dishes not only because my kitchen is overflowing but my cupboards are getting bare and we have fewer and fewer clean ones left.
I also have to hand sew a little on the girls dresses so the seams don’t scratch them. Lilah called it pokey and I’m hoping by covering it she’ll be okay. I’d hate to make them wear undershirts and the dress in 100 + degree weather at 4:00 in the afternoon for the wedding. I’m afraid of melting and I feel for Carolyn. It’s also been humid which makes it even worse.

Anna did a great job on my dress. It’s a pull over the head dress with no zipper and I have large arms and small boobs so I need a helper to take it off. I’m sure Jon won’t mind. Next time we’ve decided that we’d put a zipper somewhere. I’m not sure where, but one of the sides near the sleeve seems like a good place.

Two days to go. Lilah’s exciting for the wedding and I can’t wait to get everything over with. I bought the girls new shoes and Jon was like why do they need new shoes? and I was like because sandals do not go with their dresses, and even though they’re white shoes I got them with growing room for this winter, so I just bought the winter Sunday shoes now.
He seemed to accept that explanation. 🙂

It’s strange how you think next month won’t be a big spending month and then it is. I’ve spent a lot on the baby shower so far, but I’m not counting it until everything has been bought, especially since I’ll be getting some money from Carolyn and my mom for it. I can’t afford to pay for it by myself and Carolyn can’t afford to put much time into it. Wedding and a honeymoon- whatever.
I hope she makes it to the honeymoon destination though. They’re going to Maui and it’s been getting hit with tropical storms and a hurricane, though I’m sure they won’t mind being caught inside if they even make it there.

Also Eden just put bread up her nose and a little bit is stuck up there. Last time snot got it out, but I worry that it will be inhaled, but how can a doctor scoop it out?

I’m kinda  a stickler for not letting the girls just play with game pieces. Lilah likes to play with the sequence “money” and I don’t usually let her.
One because if I’m not careful they girls get out other toys out and it’s hard to keep them separated. Two I’ll find the pieces around the house.
I just don’t like it.
Well Jon played Candyland with the girls some time last week and they wanted to play with the sequence “money”. So he let them and they’ve played with them every day since.
He was unaware of my rule, and even if I had told him he’d probably just say I have too many rules. I think most of them are common sense from my mom point of view but he does not see it that way always.
Like not letting Lilah flush with her bare feet. Just so gross and then you have the old germs getting on her feet and walking around our house. Just yucky.
I have other rules. Like no getting dirty outside, but that never sticks with Jon and I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t care.
I also set a timer when they’re fighting over something. When the timer goes off they switch, an idea I got my my niece Shauntae. Jon doesn’t like this because he wants them to work it out, I just don’t see Eden doing that until she’s older.
It’s hard being two parents to the same kids. We’re  mostly on the same page but if I mention a rule, Jon will not defy it at that time purposely even if he thinks it’s crazy. We discuss later.

Also Eden has just started throwing more temper tantrums, or kinda like them. There’s no kicking or screaming but she likes to put her head down and cry. It’s kinda cute but annoying because she’s easily upset lately to a point where it’s hard to calm her down.  She’s also more sensitive to not getting her way and  neither of the girls are good at listening to each other.
I noticed Lilah is the dominating one at home and then when at my parents Eden was dominating over Adrianne. But it’s usually the older one is minding there own business and the little one comes along wanting what the older one has. Eden wants what Lilah has and Adrianne wanted what Eden had. Eden got quite good at saying “Adrienne no” when I was there on Friday with them.
Oh well, that’s the circle of life.

Well, I’ve been a little busy with my enrichment calling and with the wedding.
I was at my mom’s house all day Friday. I was sewing, in which Eden’s dress is now done and I have just the hand sewing to do! I do need to sew bows but those are on the bottom of my list of things to do. Julie picked Naia up from my parents and Andrea came into town that afternoon. My Aunt Susan was also in town for a conference so I stayed for dinner Friday night, besides the fact that I didn’t finish putting the zipper in until 5:30 and I knew cereal would be what Jon had for dinner. After dinner I took the girls over to Sears and got a little something for Carolyn’s bridal shower, which was Saturday.
Because of my various forgetfulness I didn’t get the girls home until 9:30 pm and I was grumpy.
I knew Jon would have Saturday with them so I didn’t worry too much about him seeing the girls, though he didn’t see me very much this weekend either.
Saturday was Carolyn’s Bridal shower. I won the game that dealt with who knew the most about Carolyn. 13 out of 20. She’s pretty secretive so I’m proud that I knew/ remembered most of the answers.
Carolyn is my kinda helper/ payee for the baby shower that I’m/ we’re throwing for Andrea. Julie will actually be doing most of the help since Carolyn will be in Maui for a Honeymoon  and then back to work. I’m very grateful for Julie, so far she’s written the invitations and will probably be helping with food. It’s nice to have someone else to help. I know Caorlyn will help where needed, but with the wedding and honeymoon it’s mostly picking up food or a cake that she’d have to worry about.

I’m going  a little nuts with everything I have to worry about. I have to plan my lessons for Lilah’s class and even though we get a few pages with ideas sometimes they’re not as age appropriate and they only really fill up one lesson, in which I have two to worry about. 2 hours can be such a  long time with toddlers. Things you hope to take 10 minutes take 5 and some things that you hope to take 5 take 10. If I have time at the end I usually just dance to various songs with the kids. Sam is also my assistant and is super creative, or at least knows where to go to get great ideas, and has experience teaching, so I’m a little nervous. It’s mostly filling up the whole time I worry about though.

I’m also busy planning/ coordinating a big enrichment, in which the enrichment isn’t that big but the activity that weekend is. I have a hard time delegating. I feel that coordinating and delegating isn’t a job so I volunteer for things that I want done, but only by me. I know, I know,  I need to get better. I have a super great committee who do what they’re suppose to so it’s more a matter of saying yes I have time to do this and I should do this, or no I don’t have time and someone else can do it. I feel a little overwhelmed right now, but that’s because we just had a meeting and this is the first one I’m completely over and it’s a big one. I think I’ll be fine once I get things sorted at a little more.
So the wedding August 18th
Baby Shower September 1st
Enrichment Sept 13th and 15th
The next Enrichment soon after on Nov 8th.
Crazy!

Eden often likes to play games with Lilah. She’ll count and go find Lilah for hide and seek and even though Lilah will continuously say she’s not playing, Eden will continue to count and go find her sister in the exact same spot. It breaks my heart a little but Eden doesn’t seem to be disappointed by the situation. She laughs as she counts and gives me a big smile once she finds Lilah.

This morning the girls had chased each other or raced to the room. Eden continued to chase Lilah and eventually I heard “Eden I’m not playing, stop chasing me.” So Eden did. In fact I think she’d been in the bathroom brushing her hair for at least a minute before Lilah realized she was in fact not being chased. As Lilah realized that Eden was not interested in chasing her but was in fact interested in brushing her hair her attitude changed.
After a short time I heard, “Eden come chase me.” and Eden apparently was not in the mood because she just came and stood between me and the mirror and said no.
Eden had had enough rejection.
Eventually Eden did go play with Lilah and they had a grand ole time running around chasing each other.
I realized that Lilah was mastering the art of flirting without the flirting, so I guess it was the technique of flirting.
No I don’t want you now that you want me. Wait, you don’t want me, I want you.
Maybe it’s just familiar to us. As long as we’re doing the rejection it’s fine, but once a person willfully leaves we lose the power that we wanted.

A little while back Jon made me change my side mirrors.
At first I was skeptical, but now I’ve adjusted and have found that my blind spot is now zero.
I love to drive on the freeway and watch as people pass me, not that I drive slow, I just don’t drive 80mph on the freeway like others, well sometimes I do.

So we’ve decide no more little rubber bands for Eden’s hair. She’s pulled the last trick and put the last rubber band into her body.
Today she was asleep once we got home from a morning of errands. I laid my angel down and she and Lilah took long naps.
Well both girls awoke and at some point before I got in there Eden took her hair holders out once again.
I asked where they went and she said her nose. I couldn’t see anything when I look up her nose with a light and we found one of the rubber bands in her bed. I would have taken her to a quick care right away but we have a well doctor’s appointment tomorrow. So I was torn, should I talk her or do I wait? Well the night progressed and I checked up there after dinner sometime. I saw where it was lodged and as I went to retrieve it with tweezers the thought that I could do more harm then good came to mind since it was in a precarious spot and then I remembered how a woman’s son had aspirated a popcorn corneal and had lots of problems. I finally decided to take her to a quick care. It was 7:45 and I was I hoping to get there before 8 pm. Well it didn’t matter that I made it there before 8 because it closed at 7:30pm. I called Jon and asked him to page the doctor to see if it could wait until tomorrow. I guess he chuckled at the thought of waiting and said, yes we should get it taken care of tonight. I was waiting at Target to return shoelaces while he paged the doctor so I just finished some shopping.
(We’ve decided to try the little barrettes to see if they’ll keep her hair out of her face, since Jon won’t let me cut bangs on her.)
I went to the ER and waited forever. We finally got in and it took very little time to get the small clear rubber band out. I think it was easily 1/2 inch in but more between 3/4 to an inch deep within her nasal cavity from how far the light thingy went up her nose. The first doctor couldn’t find it at first so I think for a few seconds he thought I was just an overreacting mother until he spotted it. I held her head while the first doctor held the light and the main doctor retrieved it and a nurse watched and also held Eden’s head. It was a little scary for Eden and she didn’t want to talk after that, but she did give the nurse a high five.
Eden got stickers and I received lots of complements on her cuteness and her good behavior of being calm while they got the rubber band out.
So that was my night. I got home around 10:40pm and Eden was still awake, as was Lilah who was anxiously awaiting her sisters arrival.
Oh the adventures of motherhood!

On Saturday we got a new queen bed, only it wasn’t new. It was free from a friend of my sister Carolyn’s or Chris who also got us Phantom tickets. He didn’t need it anymore due to moving in with his girlfriend and was just giving it away. Since Carolyn and Derrek were getting married he offered it to them, but they want a king bed, so she offered he give it to us and it all work out that way. It was described as a bed that was firm with back support, and Jon wanted a firm bed, so we took it. I am a little like “It is a used bed” but Jon reminds me that we sleep in hotels and really you never know when the last time they washed the comforter was, etc. It’s not too bad of a mattress. I got use to sleeping on my back and not moving the whole night on my other mattress and with this one I’ve been tossing a little while I get use to it. I’m not sore waking up so I consider that an improvement over the last one. Jon was sleeping on the couch for a few months, because I keep him awake by bumping into him and rolling close. Now that he’s older he needed a good nights sleep and he was less tired at work while we slept apart. In fact I got use to having our old bed to myself so when I had him sleep with me a night for my birthday I found it annoying since I sank towards him. With this bed there is no sinking towards one another, or at least it’s very slight and we each have plenty of room. (I don’t feel that sleeping in separate rooms distanced us, we still found time to be close and even just cuddle when we watched tv or whatever. )
I do like having us in the same bed, but there is a part of me that loved having my own bed.:)

Eden also got a new bed, relatively speaking, this weekend. On Saturday Jon saw her climb into her crib, while the gate was down, but he figured if she could climb in she might climb out and didn’t want her to hurt herself doing the latter. We changed my baby’s crib to a toddler bed. The girls now love it. Yesterday they spent hours in there playing with toys in the morning and then hours in the afternoon reading books and the fighting was even to a minimum.
Besides being tall enough to climb into her bed Eden now reaches the doorhandles and opens doors. I remember it took Lilah a little while to be able to do that, so I’m pretty sure Eden is taller than Lilah was at this age.
Our room is now no longer safe from either little girl and I may need to lock the door, which I would find annoying every time I have to go to the bathroom since I like ours, but thus far if the door is shut they know not to go in there. We just have a general rule of respecting privacy and not playing in our room without us there.
They’re growing up but I wouldn’t want another one right now. Babysitting Naia has reminded me how needy a baby is and how easy a toddler is in some ways. I’m use to the girls feeding themselves and entertaining themselves and Naia doesn’t do that, except entertain herself sometimes. I like the baby who visits. It gives me my reality check of what three kids might be like.

Jon introduced me to this password lock safe program. Basically I remember one password and input the info for all my other accounts and it remembers them.
I liked it because I could randomly generate passwords and not have to worry about memorizing them, which made things more secure.
The one problem, and it was really because of me, was I didn’t keep the passwords current on my thumb drive. I just had them on the hard drive with a copy on the thumb drive.
Well we got a new computer and I forgot to get them updated to my thumb drive. The password safe on my thumb drive no longer opens so I don’t even have those, and we’ve had a heck of a time getting things organized and onto this new hard drive. Jon was up till 3 am, with some naps in between, last night trying to get info on here. He didn’t load the old desktop, instead he did profiles because in Windows XP that included desktops I guess, so still no passwords for me. I have been able to have the important ones emailed to me. Bloglines being my lifeline to other people and now my blog. I don’t have my passwords for other really important things like our online banking or direct loan info, though I could recover those I suppose, but I don’t need them immediately.
The other problem this new computer has created is we now need a new printer. Shesh! We only have a very old lazer jet one since I killed ours not too long ago.  The  new computer doesn’t have the input for this older printer and an adapter cable is not worth buying. Luckily Carolyn is getting married and her and Derek have their own printers, so once they decide which one they don’t want they’re going to give us one.
It’s a nice setup and Jon likes the look of Windows Vista. He keeps saying it’s so pretty.
I think I’m getting  a headache from everything and I’m not even the one doing all the hard work.

For our date last night we had $24 allotted in our budget. (We went over last month and  this month we compensate. It’s easier in some categories than others, like gas we’re -$50 since we went to Utah, so that doesn’t count when Jon has to fill up to got to work.)
We went to the Daily Chicken Gyro, it’s a fast food type Mediterranean restaurant and hookah lounge. I’ve only been there once before and I think we were engaged, where it had looked very cheesy and I was like, you want to go where for dinner?  They have since bought the space that was next to it and redecorated and it was very nice. We spent $24.02 for our date, score, now we have to be creative the rest of the month if we want to go out.
I enjoyed a garlic chicken sandwich  and some humus. It was not too garlicky but Jon did have a chicken that also had garlic. Really even if you both have garlic breath do you really feel more inclined to kiss? Anyways, it was nice to hang around and talk in the very quite atmosphere since their was about one other restaurant costumer and about 4 people in the hookah lounge.  I also enjoyed the aroma that the hookah’s gave off also. (Jon says it’s very busy at lunch hour, with being straight across the street from UNLV, they do business lunches there sometimes.)

We then headed of to Fry’s. I actually saw the welcome to Las Vegas sign for the first time. I never knew where it was located, nor cared. I think they have another one on a different side of town too, because I remember it being somewhere else.
I played solitaire on a computer while Jon chose what he wanted. Then we picked up our  girls from Sam’s house where they had had fun playing with Britta. Eden actually went in to help clean up the room before we left. She didn’t want to leave it a mess. Sam says she’s always a good helper. I’m happy that she’s always willing to help at other people’s houses, but it seems that it’s 50/50 whether or not she’ll clean up before she has to take a time out here.

So we have a new computer but it’s not set up. I still need to print out tomorrows Sunday school lesson and I forbade him to do anything until that was done. Jon’s also been doing other things.
I started cutting out Eden’s dress. I had the pieces pinned to the fabric and then it was time to lay Lilah down for a nap. I was tired so I figured I’d take a short nap. It turned out to be an hour later when Jon came and woke me in Lilah’s bed. I then went to our room and slept another hour and a half. So I have wasted some time but I think I’ll get it all cut out tonight. I was wanting to have the skirt sewn so I could hem it at my mom’s house while we’re there tomorrow. I do sew on Sunday’s if I have too and I consider this a I have too moment since I’d have to drive out there on Monday or Tuesday to do this one thing, I think not with how much time and gas I’d spend.

Side note. Jon’s dad fainted at Costco on Friday so they went to the ER on the recommendation of one of their doctor’s He was admitted overnight and as of 2 this afternoon they still have no idea what it was. They may not figure it out but we think he’ll be out soon.
He’s 77 for those who don’t know and as had declining health for most of our marriage, but he keeps chugging along. He recently had his pacemaker changed and the battery replaced and Mom said that really appeared to help him. I think he will be fine as long as he takes it easy, though he has a very hard time taking it easy.