Day: Who Knows

Hey, remember me? I'm that lady that use to write on here a lot. Where did I go? I don't know, but it was a far a way busy town where everyone is always running a hundred miles an hour and often forget the purpose of life.

So, I've fallen so far behind that my goal of writing once a day is long gone. Oh well. There will come a time in my life  when I am not so busy that I can actually write every single day, but that is just not a possibility in my life right now. I'll give a brief recap on why I'm so crazy busy and that will have to do. I'll also write a couple funny things that have been going on and quickly, briefly catch myself up here. Then I promise I'll be better, but I can also promise I won't write every day.
What's Keeping Me Crazy:

1. I'm training for the Epic Relay
2. I'm doing my darnedest to potty train my 2 year old
3. I'm working from home writing SEO articles (and that's the big one)
4. I have a 6 month old baby (the other big one)
5. I'm babysitting 2 kids for the summer, no, wait, 3
6. It's summer.

So in between all these happenings I am also doing churchy things, feeding my family, planning meals, couponing, doing yard work, folding laundry, cleaning toilets, and desperately, desperately trying to find five minutes for myself, but I honestly (and I really am not just saying this) can't remember the last time that happened, hence my not writing on here, I simply have not had 5 minutes to do it. These are some crazy times right now, but we'll get through them and be better people on the other side.

Now, on to the latest happenings around here.

1. We bought ourselves a minivan!
2. We've started over potty training about 100 times
3. Alivia now says "mama"! (First word, first said Thursday July 14, 2011)
4. Lucy has been taking swimming lessons
5. Alivia started sleeping through the night
6. Alivia stopped sleeping through the night
7. Alivia now eats her weight in baby food every day.
8. Jack has turned into a little demon child, hoping this phase passes quickly.

I'm sure there is much much more that I am forgetting, and many more things that I am blocking from my memory intentionally.  Now for the longer more detailed version of the brief summaries listed above:

1. We bought a minivan! So, about 5 weeks I found the PERFECT minivan through out local Honda dealership, and it was an awesome price. I was a silver 2005 Honda Odyssey that seated 8. I was totally pumped about it. It had 90,000 miles on it, but it's a Honda so it still had a lot left to give. I was so excited about it but we couldn't get into the dealership until Saturday because of Shawn's work. So, on Saturday morning we called in to make sure they still had it there while we were driving home from Denver. It was still there. So I took Lucy to swimming lessons and then came home and cleaned out our CRV until it glistened. Then we headed over to the dealership. I saw this van parked right out front and I knew it had sold. It sold about an hour before we got there. I was devastated. A week later I paid our CRV payment and then checked the dealerships website. They had just put up a new listing for a 2004 Honda Odyssey with only 70,000 miles on it that cost $3000 less than the other one, and it included a DVD player! Down side, it only seated 7. At this point it didn't matter. We rushed over to the dealership that night, looked at it, and then we were back there the next morning to buy it. Now our monthly car payment is lower than what it was with the CRV! The day we bought it was crazy because I had a hair appointment that I scheduled a month ago right in the middle of things, Lucy had swimming lessons on the other side of town, and Shawn had Youth Conference he had to get to, but somehow we pulled it off, and we LOVE our new van.
2. Potty training Jack, I really just don't even want to talk about it, it's just terrible.
3. Alivia said her first word! And it's "mama"! She doesn't just say mamamamamama either. In fact, she only says it when she wants something, or when she feels like I'm neglecting her, she calls for me. It's so cute. She scrunches up here little face and squints her little eyes and says "mama!" She actually pulls a lot of funny faces lately. There is the closed mouth, gums together cheeks puffed out look, her cabbage patch doll look, so stinking cute. Her eye brows up look, and then scrunched up squealing "I have something to say" look. She says mama. I love it. It melts me. I've earned it.
4. Lucy's swimming lessons. So, I signed Lucy up for some swimming lessons at the pool in our neighborhood. Problem was I didn't want to pay $80 for one child for swimming lessons, especially since I used to teach them, it frustrates me to pay anything at all. So, I signed her up for the Saturday only lessons. There were only four of them so they were half price (still a total rip off). So she went and they basically just played in the water with her. It was frustrating for me because I knew she was ready to learn more than how to play motor boat. Anyway those lessons simply accomplished a little bit of water awareness and taught Lucy how fun it is to play in the pool, something she didn't need me to pay $40 for her to learn. Then Shawn found a groupon deal for $25 swimming lessons for two weeks. Now that's more like it. So we signed her up, I drove her across town for two weeks, with 5 kids each trip (babysitting Haylee and Caleb), and now she is a swimming junkie. Well, sort of, but at least she knows the basics which is what I expected her to be able to learn at the first lessons. Jack has his turn coming up in December sometime.
5. Alivia decided that she was good and ready to start sleeping through the night. She's been doing this for basically 3 weeks. It's the solid foods that are the secret here. The only problem with her sleeping through the night is that she feels like 5:30 is an appropriate time to say good morning to the world and wakes up her brother and sister in the process. Has anyone ever noticed that I'm not a morning person? Because I'm pretty sure my kids and my husband are noticing.
6. Alivia decided she's done with the whole sleeping through the night thing too. After about 2 weeks of sleeping through the night, Shawn and I went to the 7th Harry Potter movie and left the kids with a sitter. I told the sitter that Alivia (who I'd already put to bed) would sleep the entire time, and I think she did, she just woke up right away when I got home. Then she spent the next 4 nights wake up to make sure I was still there. But for the past two nights she has reverted back to her old habit of sleeping through the night until 5:30. I don't know which I prefer, either way I'm totally sleep deprived.
7. Alivia LOVES baby food. She pounds the rice cereal, the oatmeal cereal, any kind of vegetables, fruits, and her personal favorite is the new fancy stuff I've been buying her, things like granola blends and meals in a bottle. Basically, I have yet to see her refuse anything! I'm loving this! It's making me feel much better about leaving her tomorrow to go run for 2 days. I know she for sure won't starve even through the one thing she refuses to take is a bottle. Little stinker.
8. Jack has been giving us a run for our money. He use to be my sweet little boy that melted my heart no matter what he did. Honestly, he could do no wrong. Now, I have NO IDEA where my sweet little boy went. Today Jack throws the biggest tantrums known to man, he is deliberately defiant in a way that I never knew was possible, and he is constantly dreaming up new ways to make my day even worse. A couple of days ago he had 6 accidents on my floors, 6! So it's back to the pull ups. He scatters board game pieces around the entire house, gets into my bag of sugar (the bag is a thing of the past, it's now in a good Jack proof (hopefully) container), smears my walls with mud, wipes his face on his chair, some how pees around his pull up at night (not entirely his fault, but still), throws rocks into the street, hits the car with baseball bats, sticks his arm up tail pipes, spits (oh how I hate that one), hits small unsuspecting children (boils my blood), kicks his nursery teacher (right in front of me, so I kicked him back), and at the end of a long hard day of a combination of all these things, he throws a brand new roll of toilet paper into the bath tub. Who knew something so little could be the straw that breaks the camels back? Oh my sweet little Jack, where ever you are, will you please, please come back to me? I don't like this little demon that is taking your place.

If you have made it this far you are a trooper. I needed to write these things down for my own good. There are so many nights when I lay down and think to myself, "Someday I'll look back and actually miss these days, or so I've been told." And as terrible as some days are, I know I'll want to look back when I wonder how I ever got threw them. That, and my kids do some funny things everyday and if I write more I'll remember more.

One last thing, I have to write about my day yesterday because it was a doosey. We woke up and came downstairs only to be reminded that neither Shawn nor I did the dishes last night. My kitchen was in shambles! My love seat had a mountain of laundry on it that I could not get to because I was SWAMPED with work, my desk resembled New Orleans post Katrina, and I don't even want to document what the kids bathroom looked like. As I walked down the stairs I could feel my stress level and blood pressure rising. Shawn must have had the same feeling because he knew I was so busy with work that day. I was on the verge of tears. I HATE when my house is out of control which is funny because it is more often than it's not these days.

Anyway, I had a noon deadline for 5 articles to write, Jack was being TERRIBLE, and Alivia was being high maintenance. I knew right then there was no way I was going to be able to meet my dead line. Shawn did what he could to help and got a load of dishes in the dishwasher. Too bad we had about 3 loads accumulated. Seriously, I've been SO SO busy this week with work. Anyway, I did my best, missed my deadline, and my house still looks terrible. That said, once I did get my articles in (3 hours late), I implemented my friend Haley's filing system, so now my desk looks AMAZING! That's probably why I'm sitting here typing. My desk is so clean and organized that it's become my own personal stress free zone. LOVE IT. So now I need to stop typing and start cleaning. It will feel good. But I wanted to take a minute to just write, because it needed to be done.