Busy week

I have had a busy week and have not really had the time to update my blog. My usual time to update the blog is between 8-10:00 pm. after the kids go to bed. D has been working from 12:00 pm. to 8:00 pm (it really ends up being from 9-10 am. to 8:00 pm) on Monday and Thursdays so those days I am pretty exhausted and I do not feel like blogging. I went out with some new neighborhood friends on Tuesday night and D went out with a friend last night so my nights have been busy. Plus I am trying to finish my sister-in-law's pillow which is becoming more difficult as I get to the ribbons. I worked on it last night from 8-10 trying to miter the ribbons edges and then sew them onto the pillow. I will have to take pictures the next time I have it out. It will be really cute once she gets Lexee's initials embroidered onto it. So basically, during the 8-10 pm. time slot is when I have time to really get stuff done that I really want to do. My choices are watch TV, check out the Internet and update my blog, begin/finish sewing projects or spend quality time with D (of which I do that while I am watching TV and sewing). So today I let Mallory watch a cartoons while Nathan is sleeping so that I could update my blog. The girls barely watch any television anymore, which I fully support. They really play with each other or spend most of their time playing outside with the neighbors. I get chances during the day to quickly check and respond to e-mails and to do other short household activities that I have to get done but nothing where I need to concentrate or need a couple of hours to conquer.

D figured out what was wrong with Mallory the last couple of weeks. To rehash, she has been very clingy, not wanting to play outside with the neighborhood kids, very whinny and kind of sad. He talked to her and she got really upset when Julianne wanted to play outside this weekend and Mallory chose not to. She told him that she really missed Julianne. He challenged her to go outside and to play with the other kids and not to avoid those situations where she used to play and have fun also. Mallory recognized that Julianne still loves her and that she is just choosing to play outside more. Mallory would be just as happy to play pretend inside with Julianne, however, Julianne really loves to play outside with the neighborhood friends. So Mallory has been playing outside more with Julianne and the neighborhood friends and is not avoiding as much. She still may chose to play inside by herself sometimes but at least she will not be so sad about it.

Here are pictures from our neighborhood ice cream/pizza social we had on Sunday. It was really fun and the kids just thought of creative activities to play with. They made parachutes out of napkins and string and used pretzels as the weight. They played with them for about an hour. The adults had fun talking and thinking up ideas for the 4th of July festivities. We may try to do a float this year for the parade or just have everyone walk as a neighborhood. Nathan now has a secret crush on a neighbor dad. He held him for the entire picnic and loved sitting with him.





Mallory, Nathan and I played with our abundant sand bag (from my brick paver project of which I bought too much sand) and made some traditional glue and sprinkle art. I also used some dried herbs from our kitchen to add some color. Mallory really liked the project and made several pieces of art. Nathan just liked throwing the sand and getting glue on his hands.





Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing Nathan and Mallory holding hands in the car after Nathan initated it (so sweet)
-having great friend support (thanks Jess and Jill)
-going out and meeting new SAHM's in our neigborhood

Feeling better

Mallory was feeling better Tuesday evening so I sent her to school on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon she was complaining that her ears hurt. I gave her Tylenol and it helped her ear pain. Wednesday evening she was complaining because her eye was hurting and it was starting to get red and to discharge some yellow stuff. So we put her to bed and in the morning her eye was completely swelled up, shut tight and her eyelashes were crusted with eye gook. I felt so bad for her. Her eye looked terrible and she was not doing well. Her major complaint was that her ears still hurt and her eye was closed shut. So I took her to the doctor and she ended up having an ear infection and the infection spread to her sinuses and to her left eye. I had never heard of that but I guess it spreads inside. The doctor put her on some strong antibiotics and she is now healing fine. Thursday night her swelling went down and now she just has red circles around both her eyes. She if finally feeling better. Knock on wood but no one else has gotten this bug it so hopefully it will stay that way.

Mallory does not get sick much, probably only a couple times a year, but when she does get sick it seems to take over her body. The last time she was sick for this long was when she had the stomach virus for 4 days and we ended up taking her to the ER because she had not eaten or drunken anything for 3 days. She finally bounced back after she was given an IV and some anti-nausea medication. That, so far, has been our only trip to the ER. Our kids rarely get sick and we do not fuss too much if they do. I rarely take them to the doctor because I firmly believe that their bodies will heal themselves. So I am pretty aware of when I do need to take them to the doctor since I don't take them every time they have a fever, stomachache or cold. I was going to wait when I heard that she had an earache but when she woke up with her eye closed shut I knew that this was something more than her body could take care of. So she is back to herself. You go Mallory!




Julianne is becoming a little writer. She has several journals and paper tablets that she writes in regularly. Sometimes after school she is very crazy and gets extra upset with Mallory or myself. During these times I end up sending her to her room to be by herself. This helps because she gets so emotional and I think from being at school she is around people all day and influenced by them all day that by the end of a busy school day she comes home and takes out her overstimulated energy out on us. So anyways, on Friday she was acting up and I told her she needed to spend some time by herself and she got mad and stormed out of the house and went outside. I gave her some space and went out there 10 minutes later and she had put one of our chairs up outside and was writing and coloring in her journal. She wrote: "I am a god droler and riter. I love the way I drol and rit". Translation-I am a good drawer and writer. I love the way I draw and write. She drew some hearts with smiley faces in them and her friends on the swings. After she was done her behavior was much better and she was able to play with Mallory without getting so mad at her for little things. So I think next time I may suggest that she write in her journal after school in order to settle her down and transition to being at home and not at school.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-hanging out with our great neighbors
-being able to ride our bicycles to the OSU game to avoid stressful traffic
-hearing Julianne read to me
-seeing Nathan smell his sinky feet (they really do smell)

Halloween costume resolved

OK, so we went to the fabric store yesterday and I am officially not going to make the girls Halloween costumes. The patterns look way to complicated and it would have taken me forever to do them. So I am glad that I got that figured out. I will stick with my easy home projects from now on and not try to tackle making costumes. The girls were also not too thrilled about me making something since they were not as fun and pretty as the ones that are in the next isle over already made. I am a little relieved since I knew it would be hard but now I don't have to worry about it and can concentrate on other projects.

Mallory is finally over her sickness. She had a fever for a few days and last night she complained of her ear hurting so we will see if that turns out to be anything or she was just sleepy. I sent her and Nathan to school this morning so this is my second official child free Wednesday morning since school started. Julianne did not have school last week on Wednesday so she was home with me last week. It is already 9:56 and I got home at 9:30, I went online to check few things, I am now writing in my blog and after this I will run and hopefully pick up around the house a little before I have to go and pick them up again.

Julianne and Mallory started taking gymnastics again last night (Mallory did not go to her class since she was not feeling well). Julianne did great. She really tried and had a lot of fun. She sometimes has a hard time having fun and not being too critical about what she is doing and if she is not doing it how she thinks she is doing it she will stop or just mess around. I think she is slowly gaining her confidence and not taking herself too seriously. I am so glad in that aspect. The other day I asked her who she played with at recess and she told me she chased the boys with her friend Olivia. She said, "I like to do that". Which was just funny coming out of her mouth since she was so afraid of boys for the first 5 years of her life. It has been fun seeing her come out of her shell and enjoy life more often.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-having 2.5 hours to myself every Wednesday
-going running and not worrying about having to come home by a certain time so that D can leave to go to work
-cool fall mornings

A slower weekend

This weekend was actually pretty relaxing compared to the last couple of weekends. Our weekends have been really crazy with Julianne's birthday parties, football games and other social gatherings. This weekend was much more peaceful and much needed especially after our three days of darkness and ice refrigeration. I do kind of miss the simple life of living without electricity. I liked the quietness, the candlelight, the sound of the crickets and outdoors, being more in touch with nature and the power of nature, and spending more quality time with the kids and D. The girls were not really that affected by the outage since they do not watch much television and they spend most of their time pretend playing with themselves or playing outside with the neighbors. So in that respect it was nice that I did not have kids who did not know what to do with themselves without their TV or video games.

However, D and I defiantly got back into our regular routine of putting the kids to bed and relaxing by watching TV or renting DVD's. During the day when I am with the kids I do keep the TV off so that I can concentrate on them and not get distracted and so that they do not grow up with a TV constantly on. So I do like the stillness and my patience is much lower when I am not distracted about senseless TV, but at night I am so exhausted that I like laying on the couch and watching senseless TV shows. Sometimes I feel like I should be more productive during that time but others times laying on the couch is really what I want to do. So anyway I am rambling on about my TV conflict. Don't we all have conflicts in our life?

One of my new sewing projects that I will be working on within the next month are my sister-in-law's pillow for her new baby's room. She wants me to sew her a pillow using the trim from an existing lovely blanket, sewing in on a different fabric and then sewing some ribbon on it She will take this section to a embroiderer and get Lexee's initial on it and then I will make it into a pillow cover. I will take a picture of the template and post it within the next few days. It should be a pretty simple project, so we will see.

After that project I may take the girls to the fabric store to see if they want me to make them a Halloween costume or just bag that idea and sew them a Lazy Days Skirt. The skirt is kind of a season too late but if I use heavier fabric they could wear it with tights during the winter. So the skirt looks less complicated than a potential Halloween costume so we will see. I tried to make Julianne a Google, her favorite stuffed animal, costume when she was three and it turned out to be a disaster that I never finished. I don't really need any more projects that I don't finish so I am trying to acknowledge my abilities and time constraints that I have and plan wisely. Sure it is fun to have high expectations, to dream big and to challenge ourselves but when it gets too stressful and too much of a chore then I get turned off and my sewing hobby will be stalled for several months because I am too disappointed that I did not finish it. So especially since Halloween is a deadline that may make it worse. I want my sewing hobby to be fun and enjoyable and I have had too many projects make it un-enjoyable and cumbersome. So I am not doing that anymore. Well enough of that topic.

Mallory had a headache all day today and she was really hot this evening. I gave her Tylenol and she took a nap on the couch with D this evening and we put her to bed so I never actually took her temperature so hopefully she will feel better in the morning. D is great when the kids are sick. He is the man to sleep with if they are puking all night or they need some extra comfort at night. I on the other hand am not that great of a help at night. He can sleep through anything, can go back to sleep easily and is more patient if he does not get a good nights sleep. Again I am accepting my limitations!!

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-running with D at 6:45 a.m. on a cool Saturday morning
-going to bed at 10:00 pm. and not waking up until around 6:30 a.m. (that's some good sleep!)
-seeing Mallory sleeping on D's chest

What a week!!

Well we had Julianne's family birthday party on Sunday. As we were preparing for her party the winds started to really pick up and at 3:00 p.m. our electricity went out. I was not too concerned since we were having bolognese and we had a gas stove top. So we went on with the party without the electricity. The winds continued to become stronger and stronger throughout the party and most of our family members wanted to get back to their homes so that they could see if they had any damage and to get prepared if they did not have electricity. After everyone left we walked around the neighborhood with our neighbors to check out all the damage that the winds were creating. The news reported that the winds got up to 60-75 miles per hour. We made the kids wear helmets in case more tree branches fell. We actually should not have been out in the storm but was pretty fascinating. When we actually went out on the street it was very scary. There were so many tree limbs down, trees uprooted and tree debri all over the roadway. It was nothing that I have never seen. Mallory was very scared and we were afraid that Nathan was going to fall down. We never got any rain it was just the wind. The wind remained strong until about 10:00 p.m. when it finally died down. The local electric company, AEP, reported that on Monday 625,000 customers were without power. That included us and most of everyone that we know. That was about half of their customers. The windstorm was actually the remnants of hurricane Ike which just went crazy over our area for some reason. I don't know if the winds were that strong when it moved over the Midwest but I know that a cold air front was moving this way so it might have collided with Ike and become stronger. I really have no idea since I did not get to watch the news since today. I did not even know that it was coming before it came so I was really surprised. But most people were very shocked at how strong it was. I could not imagine how strong a real hurricane would be like. This was strong enough for me.

So fast forward to today and we finally got power last night at 8:30, which was Wednesday night. So we were out of power from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday night. It was a long time. I had to throw out all of our refrigerated food and get all new food this morning. The kids were out of school until today, Thursday. And there are still a lot of people without electricity. I guess what the problem was is that AEP sent their employees to Texas to help with the aftermath of the hurricane and they were not here to help the residents in Columbus. So that is why it has taken so long to get the electricity back on. Some of the reports still say people will not get their electricity until Friday or by the latest Sunday. I guess that they have gotten the AEP crew back from Texas and have gained additional helpers from other states to help in the effort. So restoring power should start to become quicker with more crews in Columbus.

The girls did pretty well during the outage. They did not really have a hard time going to bed or adjusting to the lack of lighting. they mostly played with the neighborhood children during the day and we read books at night. So overall it was not too bad. I actually enjoyed not having the TV or computer on during the evenings. D and I actually talked about not having TV or computer on one night a week so that we can concentrate on ourselves and the kids. We were defiantly less stressed out since there were less distractions for us. However, I was a little stressed out by Wednesday because I was tired of running downstairs to get the milk and other cold food and Nathan did not really understand that crying at the fridge for milk was not getting him anything. We were lucky that the weather was nice, we knew we were not going to freeze, and that we had great neighbors to rely on.

Here are some pictures of the debris left in our yard, which was not as bad as others.


Here are some pictures from our neighborhood.



I had clothes in the dryer and washer that were not completed so I had to improvise and dry them outside.



The kids played with silly string while they were out of school.


Here is Julianne at her party. She had a great time and this year she loved the attention. She used to not like being the center of the attention but now she does. Here is her loving the attention.



Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-experiencing a storm like this with my family and knowing that no one was injured
-having electricity
-seeing the community come together to help neighbors
-spending quality time with my family
-Julianne enjoying her birthday party
-not having any house damage from the storm
-did I mention having electricity!!

Pictures

Here is a picture of Mallory and Nathan on their first day of school


This Julianne presenting to us her list of why she is special from her classmates. The teacher let her take the piece of paper home.

Here is Julianne finding her birthday present in our driveway.




This weekend has been pretty busy also. We went to a surprise birthday party for my good friend from high school. It was a lot of fun and she was surprised. Saturday night is the big OSU vs USC game. I have not watched any of it yet since D went to get together with his friends. Tomorrow night we are having Julianne's family birthday party. So it should be a good day tomorrow. I am going to make bolognese since I thought it would be less expensive than ordering food but as it turns out it is not going to be any cheaper. Oh well it is always nice to make food.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing Julianne control her emotions tonight after a busy day with friends (we have been working on this)
-Mallory saying that she missed me while I worked out
-Nathan saying "hug" while I am changing his diaper

My purse

Well I have finally completed my purse!! I think it looks pretty good. I am a little disappointed by the seam line on the top dark brown fabric from having to sew in the lining. I am debating on if I should take out the seam and hand sew the lining back in so that the seam does not show in the outside. I know that you can not really see it in the picture but I can see it so that is all that matters.

I think I might make another purse and just use the paisley fabric and the darker brown. I like the darker brown and the paisley fabric together better than the lighter brown. Overall I am happy with the bag, I learned from my mistakes and I am excited to make another one. It was a fun project that was challenging but not too challenging and it could be completed in a decent amount of time.

I am trying to figure out what to work on next. I was possibly thinking of going to the store and seeing if the girls wanted me to make their Halloween costumes. So we will see if I will attempt that.



Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing Nathan discover his shadow (I will write about this later)
-sleeping in a cool house
-completing a project and the sense of accomplishment I get from it