An Evening With Sarah

I had a meeting last night, Kim was working, so my dear friend Sarah stayed with Natalie. Why, you might ask, is Sarah babysitting and not a nice high school girl? Well, the answer is for another blog entry all together.

Me: Natalie, Sarah is coming over to have dinner with you tonight and then she is going to give you a bath, read you stories, and put you to bed. Does that sound fun?
Natalie: Sarah is coming!!!
Me: Yeah, does that sound fun?
Natalie: Yeah, and she'll give me a bath and I'll have poopie and she can wipe my bottom.
Me: Maybe?!

So, everything went well. Natalie and Sarah had a great time. When I asked Sarah about how everything went she said, "Great! Natalie can talk. I had no idea how much Madeline (Sarah's daughter) inhibited her." It is true. When Natalie and Madeline are together, Natalie is fine with being the follower. She is fine with watching Madeline, seeing what she is doing, and playing along. Madeline has established herself as the alpha-toddler. I like this aspect of Natalie's personality. I like that she doesn't feel the need to be in charge all the time, she is not bossy (for a toddler). She cares about her friends and their feelings. I don't think that I am raising the future president, vice-president maybe.

The dynamic-duo

Halloween 2006

Confessions of a Blogging Slacker

I have been a blogging slacker lately. For those of you out there, and you know who you are, who think I am actually going to get my "My Space" page together, forget it. I have a couple of excuses to offer.

1. My job has been a little crazy lately. I have taken on extra clients and 39 pregnant women can drive a person crazy. I still love me job it is just taking more of my time these days, twice as much as when I started actually. We are looking to hire more people but until that happens I get to spend lots of time chatting with pregnant women.
2. I am the hospitality chair for our MOPS group which gets started in three-and-a-half weeks. That means that I have been spending lots of time planning brunch schedules, naming tables, planning decorations, favors, games, etc. Again, something that I am glad to do but it is taking time.
3. I am tired. No explanation here.
4. I am raising a toddler. Since we have gotten back from vacation, I have been doing a lot of single parenting, not my favorite. I don't like it when I am the only parent Natalie sees during her waking hours. Thankfully Kim's schedule will be getting more normal soon. These days make me whine, complain, then remember my dear friend who's husband is across the ocean and I feel guilty. I don't know how she or any other military family does what they are asked to do.

OK, that's all the excuses I have to offer....

Here are some recent snippets from our life.

• If you are a parent you probably know the "Clean-Up Song" (Clean-up, clean-up, everybody, everywhere. Clean-up, clean-up, everybody do your share). Here is Natalie's version, pirated from her dear friend Madeline, "Clean-up, clean-up, everybody do my share!" She sings it very sweetly as she happily helps clean-up, it makes me laugh.
• While we were reading "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See" the other night, Natalie called the Sea Lion, a "Swimming Lion". I thought it was so cute. Unfortunately she asked me what it was, I told her a Sea Lion and she corrected herself.
• Natalie's new favorite thing to sing, the "Pokey-Pokey", known to the rest of us as the "Hokey-Pokey".
• Kim starts a "writing elective" next week. Three cheers for that!! I'm not sure what a "writing elective" includes but it sounds good to me!
• My first quilt is almost done (see excuses above as to why it is not done yet). I just have to sew the outer border on.
• We are going to Jefferson next Thursday for a long Labor Day weekend! I haven't been home since early March. My soul is longing for the mountains and my mom and dad.

I will post some more pictures again soon! Thanks for listening! To my other blogging friends, please don't get slack like me. I still read your blogs daily, I just don't always to my share.

Morning Alarm

Soon after I got Natalie out of her bed this morning all the fire alarms in the house started going off. It took me a minute to figure out what alarm system was going off. Looking back on the situation it didn't even occur to me that there might be a FIRE, I just wanted the noise to stop, it was too early for such things. So with a toddle CLINGING to me I ran through the house (Kim had already left for work at 5:15) and down two flights of stairs trying to find the source of the problem. The fire detector in the basement was flashing, ah ha! Now, all I needed to do was peel the toddler off of me, find something that could help me reach the 9' ceiling and get it to stop. Ok, mission accomplished, LOUD noise gone, small chirping noise here. So, I guess the battery is low and we slept through the beep all night and the fire alarm was giving us a final notice. Now, all I needed to do was replace the battery. Problem, I don't have a battery and I can't reach to replace the battery. Decision, this can wait until after church. More LOUD noise. Clearly the fire alarm wanted to be fixed now. So, at 6:50 in the morning I call me dear friend and ask her to send a battery and her husband to my rescue. After replacing the battery, much button pushing (why do these things have to be so complicated? I can see now why people just pull them out of the wall.),and some early cursing, the problem was solved! Natalie keeps saying "No more loud, mommie, no more loud?!" The highlight of the situation was that me toddler wanted to snuggle very close to me for 15 minutes. Thank goodness for friends!

Excuses, excuses

Kim: Hey, I'm going to be late.
Me: What's up?
Kim: I have to sew a kid's ear back on.
Me: Can't somebody else do that.
Kim: No. Then I have to check on the kid from this morning with the subdural (head bleed).

In honor of this post, let's hear the best reason you have given/received for why you/your SO is going to be late.

I'm Back

Kim, Natalie and I just got back from a week in Corolla, NC. We had a great time. We left last Saturday morning and spent the weekend in Windsor to celebrate Mama Askew's birthday and Kim's 30th birthday. On Monday we journeyed to the beach. We stayed at our friend's parents beach home "Crescent Moon". The house sleeps 22 but we only packed in 14. We were with Chris, Sarah, Madeline (Natalie's BFF), Chris's mom and dad (owners of the house), Sarah's mom and dad (who left too early), Chris's sister and brother-in-law and two friends from college. Aside from the occasional turf wars between the two-year-olds we had a great time. Beach vacations are definitely different with children!

I still haven't figured out how to take good pictures to capture the moment, I am hoping that Sarah got some good shots. I had dreams of taking Natalie out on the beach in a cute little dress to take some pics, it didn't happened. Trying to align the weather, with a two-year-old's naps/moods, with everything else we wanted to do was too much.

We did have some lovely kite flying weather. That held Natalie's attention for about two minutes and then she wanted to dig in the sand together. Until I had Natalie, I hated the sand. Now I tolerate it because it bring her so much joy and find myself enjoying it.

We had a great week together, growing our friendship, mostly at Chris's expense. That is what happens when you invite friends to invade your family vacation. I treasure my time with the Reames. I am still trying to convince them that NC is way better than NOVA!

Pretending

Today I pretended that I had another life.

Natalie was in "school" for the morning. I was supposed to meet someone at Starbucks at 10:00 to talk about our work with the International Breast Milk Project. Traffic was lite so I arrived early. I ordered a caramel machiato and sat down to log onto the web. I sat in a coffee shop for well over two hours, talked about ways to make a difference in the lives of AIDS orphans in Africa, used my computer with ease, did a little bit of actual work and took in the sites around me. It was blissful!

Then, I pinched myself and headed to the child care center in get my girl. My sweaty, tired, sunscreened, sandy, dirty, delighted, wonderful girl.