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.

Click here to view these pictures larger