Just a little update-y post

This is just a post to update everyone on my life.  Because it is ever so exciting.  He he.

1. We had mice.  UGH.  Somehow a mouse or a couple got in, and even though they weren't in the house for long, they made a big mess and it was the most disgusting thing I've ever dealt with and I swear they better not ever get in my house again.  We have traps everywhere now and are leaving them up probably all winter.  Possibly forever.  We also bought some of those ultrasonic things, just to see if they work.  Not holding my breath, but hey, if they end up working, great.

2. Karina loves preschool.  She loves it so much that she asks every day if it's preschool the next day.  She only goes 3 days a week, but I think she would have been happy going 5 days (I wouldn't have been though!).  Today when I picked her up, she told me she had a great day. Not just a great day, but a FANTASTIC day.  She is so adorable.

3. We are going to Chicago later this year to visit Bill's family, and we'll be flying with both girls for the first time.  Please send positive thoughts our way so that maybe Elena will not spend the entire flight crying and/or screaming, thus getting us kicked off in mid-air.  That would be bad, even if gave us parachutes.

4. We updated our kitchen a little and got a new dishwasher, sink, and counters to match the other ones we put in (nothing exciting, just laminate, but they're much nicer looking than the ones we had before.  I have plans to share photos soon.)

5. Karina and I have been working on plans for her birthday party, which we will do in early December as we've done in the past.  This year she's having a sort of undersea theme, with jellyfish, starfish, seahorses, and sea turtles.  The girl loves jellyfish, it's the funniest thing (yes, she knows they sting, she doesn't care).  Anyway, I want to make it a really great party, and really go all out, as much as I can handle, because she'll be 5!  Bill and I offered to let her have a party somewhere else, like her friends sometimes do, since it was her 5th birthday, but she just wanted a party at home, and that was fine with us.  So I'm going to try to make it extra special in other ways.  So far, we have some pretty neat invitations (I'm not bragging, I'm just proud that I came up with a clever way to incorporate her favorite toys and things while sticking to the party theme) with some clipart of her favorite characters standing on a beach, with words to the effect of, "From under the world of all her favorite things comes Karina's 5th birthday party, in the coral reef".  Inside is a beautiful picture of the coral reef with all her favorite animals.  I wanted it to look like the same characters were peeking into the water from above, but that was really hard and I couldn't make that work quite right, but I'm still pretty pleased with the result.  We got some bowls and stick on tap lights and we're making some light-up jellyfish to hang.  We took the lids to those squeezy fruit pouches that most moms are familiar with and tied some thin ribbon to them and made little jellyfish.  We found some window clings at the dollar store with sea creatures to put in the window.  And I have plans for a cool coral reef centerpiece.  I want to make a cake for her and have the same characters from the invitation on the cake to look kind of like they're on a beach.  But I might have to do cupcakes if she would rather have those.  Anyway, that's been fun to work on with her.

6. I am making a quilt.  Really.  I'm so excited, too.  Our friend is retiring this year and she is going to sail around the world, so I have already done the quilt top and it turned out so great!  I just need to find a backing material and a binding, and then buy the batting.  Then I can smash it all together and start the part I like least, the actual quilting part.  I have actually made a couple of what I call "fake" quilts, because I usually sew a straight line in a + shape across the whole thing and maybe a few other straight lines to hold the batting in place, and that's it.  Can you say L-A-Z-Y?  Yep, that's me!  But this is fun, and it was fun making her quilt because it's small.  It's only about 4'x5', just a lap quilt.  It has some 12" squares and some 12" 9-patches (which are blocks made of 9 squares that make a square that's 12" across in this case).  Then they're just placed in a checkerboard pattern and it looks pretty cool.  I'll take pictures.  I haven't finished it yet, though, so I don't have any yet.

7. My 15th college reunion is this weekend!  I am going to see my college roommate and another very good friend of ours, as well as some other friends this weekend.  Things have changed a lot at William and Mary since I graduated, but in many ways it never changes.  I can't wait to get back and walk the campus and remember all the fun times.  Roomie and I are going to go to the reunion year mixer, where alumni can get together with other alums from their graduating year, and then to a big tailgate thingy.   I wonder if I have to print something and bring it with me.  Hm, I guess I'll be looking into that later.  :-)  I'm so excited to be spending literally the entire day at my old school, without the girls or Bill, as much as I love them, but just me!  I get to be JUST ME for a whole day!!  This is nearly unheard of.  Usually I'm someone's mommy or wife, but tomorrow I get to be just plain old me.  I think one day of that is enough.  You know I'll miss those little cuties at home.  (I've already been thinking I should have gotten them tickets, too, so I could see my girls run the Sunken Gardens and stand on the steps of the Wren Building....but I'll take them another day).  Guess I should head off to bed.  Lots to do early in the morning before I head out!

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A note about these pictures.  The white dishwasher is not the one we kept; it wasn't working and we got another one, and when we installed the new one, Bill figured out what was wrong with the white one and we could have kept it after all.  Sigh.  The picture of Karina holding the drawing--those are the planets.  Check out Jupiter.  She used a poster as a guide, but still.  Proud mommy.  And the duck is the replacement ducky that's too big and has essentially been rejected at this point in favor of the smaller ducky we got at the baby store.  But it's all okay.  As long as she's happy.

Ducky Update (and a few other things)

This is for those of you who read about Elena's lost Ducky and felt as awful for her as I did.  Or close to it.  I took her to a couple stores over the weekend but they didn't have a good selection of stuffed animals to choose from, so on Monday while Karina was at preschool, we stopped in a big baby store up near Karina's school.  They had a whole shelf of stuffed animals, including a couple of Huggybuddies (no ducks of course).  They even had a plush Gund duck (not Huggybuddy), but the first duck I showed Elena, she squealed with joy and grabbed it.  "Ducky!" she cried.  That was that.  The best part is I got two of them because they were inexpensive store brand ducks.  She loves her new ducky.  I don't think it's the same kind of love, but she's happy and that's what matters.  She also became quite lovey with some of her other stuffed animals, so overall we have a pretty happy ending, all things considered.

Thanks to all of you who actually read that massively long post.  And thank you very much to those of you who expressed concern for both of us and offered some much-needed advice and insight into things (that would be you, Liz).  You were so right, and I never realized it til you said it, but I do feel guilty about a lot of things with Elena!  I'm working on that. 

Thanks all you readers out there!

Oh and I have to share the weirdest small-world story with you!  I was at my book club (okay it's not my personal book club, and I'm a new addition, but still) the other night, with my friend from my teaching days and her sister.  The other ladies were sick or unable to make it, so it was just the three of us.  We were talking for hours, and somehow the subject of blogs came up and I had said in passing that I had one.  My friend's sister asked the name, and I was laughing because of course the blog name has changed but the url is still the old name, daydreaming of cloth diapers.  So I told her, and she said, "I know that blog!  My sister in law uses cloth diapers and she sent me something from your blog ages ago!"  How funny is that?? 

We bought a new dishwasher this weekend and it was delivered today.  Hopefully we'll get it installed tomorrow.  Wish us luck!

Have a great week everyone!

The last month...

I realize I don't post very often anymore.  But it looks like roughly once a month could happen.  Here's what I've been up to the last month.

Planned with other youth advisors for the first half of the "school year" as I think of it.  Hopefully when our pastor comes back from her time away (due to chemo--she's okay, but she had to take time off to go through it) we'll plan the rest of the year.

Got Karina started in her last year of preschool.  Now that nearly had me in tears.  My little baby is almost in Kindergarten?  How can that be???  She is LOVING 4 year olds though!  I'm so glad.  I wasn't sure how she'd do, because I knew her best friend was going to be in a different class (Karina goes 3 days a week and her friend is going 5 days) but it has turned out to be a great thing.  Karina still sees her friend on the playground, so they play together then, and in the classroom, Karina has been making more friends and playing different games and just having a great time.  Her three year old teacher is the assistant in this class, so that was a great wonderful thing to have happen!  She is getting used to her new regular teacher, too, and they have started joking around together.  The other day when I picked up Karina, the assistant/former teacher, Mrs. B told me that Mrs. E loved Karina's dress so much she was teasing her that she wanted to borrow it.  Karina looked at her and said, "This dress will not fit you."  She cracks me up.  She's so smart sometimes.  She read the word 'sun' in a book about the solar system.  I think she can read some simple words, but she is like me and is so afraid to be wrong or make a mistake that I think she's second-guessing herself.  But I'm not pushing her or pressuring her, I just ask her sometimes if she knows what this or that word is.  Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't.  If she does, I praise her and get all excited and if not, it's no big deal and we figure it out together.

Recently we went to our State Fair.  We had a nice time, but we did have one bad thing happen.  Elena lost her Ducky.  You all (my regular readers) know about Karina's Lambkin, right, and how special it is to her?  Well, Ducky was like that for Elena.  But Elena's duck was smaller and she'd drop it or it would fall out of the stroller and I wouldn't notice.  If Lambkin fell out, he's so big you'd feel it when you rolled over him, or you'd physically feel him fall out of the stroller.  Ducky, being smaller, was hard to notice.  Here's what happened.  I took a few members of the youth group, some of their friends, and my girls up to the fair in the church van.  My advisor friends were camping that weekend so they were meeting us up there.  There were no other available adults.  So it was just me.  It was fine, really, just I felt like I needed to hurry so they could all start having fun.  Being the only adult, I had to do everything on my own, which normally does not happen.  There were only 2 youth and 2 friends.  They were no trouble at all, as I expected they wouldn't be (we have the BEST kids).  So when we got there, Elena had just woken up from a nap in the van and was being a little cranky. She didn't want to let go of Ducky while I put her in the stroller.  So I just let her hold onto her, thinking I'd just get Ducky back in a minute and put it in the van.  I didn't.  In the rush of getting the stroller, the right diaper bag, the wallet, the water bottles, the children, the camera, and all the youth, then locking up and making sure I had keys where I could find them again, I didn't put Ducky back in the van.  And we never saw her again.  I didn't even realize it until we were driving home.  But I figured that, as awful as it was, I would just order a new one when I got home.  I wasn't happy about it, but I knew Elena would probably not realize the difference.  And then I started looking for it online.  It is discontinued and NO ONE has it.  Not One Single Retailer on the Entire Internet.  Ducky is gone.  Every day, Elena cries for Ducky.  When she gets upset or scared or tired, or when she wakes up, she looks for Ducky and Ducky is not there.  I try to keep her distracted and she has some other stuffed friends in the crib, but they aren't the same.  Last night, after thinking I might have finally found one and having it fall through (The people at Peachtreeplaceonline.com were so kind!!!  Thank you so much), and then literally checking every single retailer that showed up and using several different variations of the key words and finding absolutely nothing, I cried myself to sleep.  My heart is just breaking for her and I feel so responsible.  My mom is so understanding and has been great at helping me realize that it's not my fault really, that it was bound to happen (she'd had several close calls beforehand, and why I ask did I not have an emergency spare backup already???), and that she will eventually forget, but still, it hurts my heart.  She will not have her special lovey from when she was a baby.  Karina does.  I guess part of what bothers me about it all is that Elena has been shortchanged in a couple of important ways.  We take plenty of photos of her, and I make sure she has an equally prominent place in the hall for her portraits.  I have equal numbers of photos of her, I saved all her little hospital mementos (although not in a pretty box).  But her first weeks...months even...were not the same.  She was NOT fun.  We did not bond the way Karina and I did.  That took a long time to happen.  Because her personality is different, the interactions she and I have are very different from what happens with Karina and me.  Bedtime is completely different.  There's no sitting and snuggling for Elena, it's diaper, jammies, and into the crib.  She can't have it the other way, I tried.  It doesn't work.  But I feel she's being deprived of that special time.  I am not nearly as patient with her as I am with Karina.  Not even close, and it's because Elena cries SO much, and Karina doesn't.  The crying just wears on me after a little bit, and I am simply not the same parent with her as I am with Karina.  I try to show her how much I love her, I do my best to appreciate her for who she is, and I don't want a second Karina.  But I am just worried that she will someday feel that I don't love her as much as I love Karina, and I do.  I love her dearly.  But I would never have let Lambkin get lost.  And I let Ducky get lost.  It just kills me inside.

Other than that, the fair was fun.  Karina rode the ferris wheel (with her "aunt" Kelly), she rode the giant Super Slide twice, all by herself, we rode the carousel (all three of us, poor Elena wanted to ride rides so badly but she's too little for most of them), and Karina rode a fishy ride.  We ate delicious, unhealthy fair food, bought some little sand-filled animals for Karina and Elena to share (but really they're just Karina's), we saw some animals but not many because the way they had the fair set up was very different, and the animals weren't anywhere near the rides and things.

Today, Bill and our friend are replacing our old dishwasher and countertops and sink.  They got almost all of it done today, but the dishwasher really gave them a hard time.  The former homeowners installed tile and didn't remove the cabinets and appliances when they did it.  So the old one was basically trapped between the counter and the floor, and the floor is like an inch thick (we discovered today)!  So installing the new one was a real pain!  Cali was on the floor on her side trying to get it all installed (Cali can do anything, this woman is amazing).  Bill helped a little, but he's no handyman.  The counter is on, and the dishwasher is in, and tomorrow they will install the new sink and test it all out.  I can't wait to use a dishwasher that will actually clean my dishes, rather than simply redeposit the random food particles onto different dishes, thus forcing me to rewash them.  Over and over and over and over.  Such a waste of time, money, electricity, hot water, soap, etc.  Plus we were having to use the heavy wash cycle or the pots and pans cycle just to get the dishes even remotely clean.  It was like the regular cycle was just sort of dripping water on them and then laughing.  The new sink will have a sprayer that doesn't leak (thank goodness!) so I'll be able to actually use it, and it's one of those ones that's really part of the faucet itself so there's no separate hookup for it.  Should be really cool.  We considered getting a sink that was just one big single section, because we do use the dishwasher for most of our dishes, and there are a couple of large cookie sheets I have that I like to hand wash, and they barely fit in the sink.  But the cost was going to be about $100-$150 difference (more expensive), and we finally just decided it wasn't worth it.  So I'm happy with the new sink and I'm excited to see how it all looks.  I took some 'before'ish pictures and I will share those and the 'after' shots, well, after it's all done.

I almost forgot!  I also went to Howl O Scream at Busch Gardens with two friends of mine and we had such a wonderful time!  We all had babysitters/husbands to watch the kids and we stayed out super late and were soooo tired and sore the next day, but it was so worth it!

I hope your September (which is already over, how does that happen so stinking fast??) was fun!
Trying something different with my pictures.  I hope this works for you guys.  These were from the fair.

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