Lots of Wants

We have a lot of wants. We made the mistake of going to RC Willey on Friday night. There are a few things we've been wanting for quite awhile. I am determined to get a new bed. Our current bed is pretty ugly. It's brass and white. It's fine, but it's old and our children somehow manage to disassemble it daily. I want an iron bed- nothing super fancy but one that matches our room. We also want a sofa and loveseat. Again, the furniture we have is fine, but a little old and kind of ugly. We have the most comfortable recliner on the planet...it's just so unattractive. Anyhoo, we went to RC Willey as I mentioned and found a sofa and loveseat set that we really like, and a bed. All of it will cost about $1500. It's funny how that amount of money doesn't seem all that significant when you're sitting on the furniture you want in the store. Then they lure you in even more with the 12 months no interest, 90 days same as cash talk. I felt myself getting sucked into the vortex, and then a lightning bolt struck my brain- I remembered the credit card! Hey! We had resolved to pay it off. Why on earth did I think we could dig deeper into debt? We're waiting for a financial aid check and a tax return, and hope to pay a significant amount on the credit card with them. I still want that furniture, though. One day...

So we re-painted our room this week. The other blue was just too much. It was so vibrant and obnoxious. We painted over it with a very light blue, and it's so much better. It's very calming. Slowly but surely our modge-podge bedroom is coming together. We just need to get rid of that ugly bed!

Other People's Kids

I babysat our neighbor kids today. They are 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. I've babysat them before, but today was a little more chaotic. I don't know why. I didn't really feel like dealing with them, so I let Anders and Eliza play upstairs in Anders' room. I went upstairs when I heard screaming, and Anders had every shirt in his drawer out and ready to put on, and Eliza was butt-naked. That pretty much sums up the day. I'm tired.

Anders has been so mouthy the last couple of days. He'll argue with everything and ask for things incessantly that he knows he can't have. Addie is cranky most of the time. No more kids. At least not now. Me need sleep.

Bored Out of My Mind

I wish. I have a knack for filling my life with activities that are sure to take at least a combined total of 175% of my time. Work is becoming very busy, which is good for job security. We're trying to institute a dozen or more policies and practices to cut down on customer turnover but we're kind of doing all of them at the same time. My home life has been equally ridiculous in terms of the amount of work I have to do. Three hours from now, for example, I have another lesson, quiz and project due for my web class. I also have to finish up my Digital Photography homework and create a 60 second commercial for my Sound class- which I have only dialogue (bad dialogue) to start with. I'll have to find background music, sound effects and time to do all this. Oh joy. I shouldn't be writing a blog right now but I felt like it.
I just took out the last two weeks worth of garbage. Maybe three weeks. I kind of like to let it pile up in the frozen tundra called 'backyard' until the dumpsters in our lovely little Land of Camelot are not overflowing. They empty the dumpsters weekly but I don't remember for a week or two. I'm really peaved by people who continue to hurl masses of waste at the dumpsters despite the fact that the dumpsters have three feet of garbage above the rim already. After Christmas you could barely see the dumpsters at all. It just looked like a landfill. I usually pick all the trash up that people left around but there was no hope for a while there.
I feel really bad for Katrina with her headaches. I try to let her take naps as often as I can when I get home but I have class a couple of nights a week and we usually have to go shopping or something on the other nights. Hopefully tonight will be the night that cures this headache. She doesn't deserve to deal with that on top of being a mom all day. I must say that I feel really lucky to have my Katrina. She's the greatest. I think she had a fun birthday and I'm so glad. It's hard to have a fun birthday when your not a kid anymore and you don't have a lot of money to work with, either. I really enjoyed watching Fun with Dick and Jane. I guess Katrina thought it was OK but I'd like to see it again. We also watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith a few weeks ago and I was surprised at how much I liked it. It was wholly entertaining (and that has little do with the fact that Angelina Jolie was in it... but that didn't hurt).
On a last and unrelated topic, I am being released from my church calling. I'm one of two Elder's Quorum secretaries for our quorum but they just changed the quorum boundaries and moved me and my neighbors to the North Quorum. I'm a bit bummed because I like my calling and I like the guys I work with but on the upside, the mystery of what calling I'll get next is always fun. Perhaps I'll go nine months without a calling like I did before this one. I think not, though.
It's time to turn on System of a Down and Alice in Chains, put my Bose TriPorts on and get crankin' at the homework. I'll check back in the next 1-841 days to fill you in on the latest. When I say you, I mean me... since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who reads this- unless Katrina reads what she's already written. I'll shutup now. Rock on. Nizzle Foschizzle.

The Week in Review

I had a fine birthday on Saturday. I told Nils that I wanted to go to a movie and to lunch with him and no kids. My mom watched the kids, and we did just that. We saw "Fun with Dick and Jane". It's funny. I don't know that I'd pay to see it again, but it was entertaining. Nils made me a hair appointment for after lunch, so I got a weave in my mop and had it trimmed a bit. I haven't had my hair weaved in almost a year, so that was much appreciated! It was a good day. But I'm old. I got money from my mom and Nils, and it's all gone. I had great fun spending it. I went to the mall by myself and bought soaps, hair stuff, etc. The kicker, however, is that I spent a ridiculous amount on stamping stuff. I'm totally not into scrapbooking, but I do like making cards and tags, so I bought all the supplies I'll ever need to do those things. It's such a waste of money, but it was my birthday money and I LOVED wasting it!

On Monday Addie had her 12 month checkup, and Anders stayed with my mom, who had the day off. I went to pick him up, and he told me to go to the doctor again. So I came home with Addie so she could nap, and went back to pick up Anders. He told me to go back home. He had such a wild day at Grandma's, he just didn't want me anymore. He loves her because she gives him candy all day. I'm sure there are other reasons for the love, but I think the candy tops them all. Addie's appointment went well. She hasn't gained any weight since her 9 month visit, so I have to take her back in a month for a weight check. She wasn't crawling at 9 months, and now she's constantly on the move, so I'm sure that's the reason. Ever since turning one, she's become quite the little spit-fire. Her personality is manifesting itself in leaps and bounds. She's funny. She has a really funny sense of humor, but she's also been a little pill. She has little tantrums and flails around, and has been pretty fussy the last week or so. I remember age 1-2 being really hard with Anders. I guess that's what we have to look forward to with her as well.

I've had a migraine for about 36 hours. I'm pretty sure I'm going to die of a stroke eventually. I've taken every drug in my medicine cabinet to get rid of this thing, and nothing is working. Maybe a frontal lobotomy will do the trick. If anyone has a secret weapon against migraines, please share. I've been getting them pretty regularly for the last 2 or 3 weeks, and I'm about ready to take a drill to my head. It's exacerbated by the fact that I can't sleep it off due to my lifestyle choice of motherhood. I'm afraid I need a powerful drug...

New Semester, Big Chair, Big Partay!

The chair and party really have nothing to do with each other. Last night we had a birthday party for Anders and Addie. Today Addie is one, and I'm just struggling to believe it. We had the party at our clubhouse. I made two big cakes, a little cake for Addie, and I made two big pots of soup. We invited my family and our neighbors, and it was fun. I was so tired afterward. My bones ached. They got lots of fun gifts. Addie took her first step last night at her party! How cute is that? She hasn't taken any today, but we thought that was pretty cool. I'll have Nils post pictures, we should have about 4 million.

We got a new computer chair. It's really nice. Our other one was such a piece of crap. It would make a loud popping noise every time you shifted or swiveled or sat down. Very obnoxious. The cushion is completely smushed so you sit down and the pole pretty much goes up yer bum. Having given that justification for the new chair, allow me to justify a little more. Our next door neighbors won a new office chair at his work party, but they didn't need it. It was sitting in a box on their living room floor for a month. Leave it to my scavenger husband to wheel and deal. We paid them $60 and agreed to babysit twice for them to go out on dates. It's a $175 chair, so we figured it was well worth it. Everytime I sit on it I brace myself for the popping, and alas, it doesn't make a sound! Wonderful!

Nils started school last week again. He's taking 9 credits this semester. One class is online so that's nice. The other two aren't that bad time wise. He's gone Tuesday night for 1 1/2 hrs., and Thursday night for 4 hours. Thursdays are rough. Oh school. Why is it still part of our lives? I project graduation in December 2007. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself on Thursday nights.

Addie's awake. Au Revoir.

Birthdays Birthdays Everywhere

Anders turned 3 yesterday. Wasn't he just born like 5 minutes ago? We're going to have a birthday party for him and Addie next week, since Addie's birthday is on the 12th. All day he kept asking me where his birthday was, and when were we going to go to his birthday. We went to dinner with my mom, and I made a cake to eat at her house afterward. When we got to her house he said, "Where are all my cousins?" We tried explaining the whole party situation to him, but he didn't really care. He wanted his cousins then are there. I made a few phone calls and we had an impromtu birthday party for him. He doesn't need gifts, just his beloved cousins. He is infatuated with them.

I can't believe Addie's turning one in 5 days. She's still so little. Her little personality is really coming through. She's so funny. Her laugh sounds like she choking, she loves to growl, and her newest thing is scrunching up her face and blowing in and out through her nose. She's starting to stand without support. She's so fun.

So my birthday is on the 14th. We really need to put a stop to the January birthdays. We can't afford it. I'm another year older. It's just weird. 28. That seems so old. A lot older than 27. I guess it doesn't matter.

So in my last entry I mentioned the sleep training we're putting Anders through. Oh my gosh. He's been a good sleeper. We trained him early to sleep by himself through the night, so this really hasn't been an issue since he was a small infant. The past couple of months he's been waking up in the night and coming into our room. It was infrequent enough that it didn't bother us too much. He would sleep at the foot of our bed or on the floor or whatever, but the past couple of weeks he was waking up almost hourly and screaming bloody murder. That got old REALLY fast, so I read in my trusty sleep habits book how to put an end to it. Basically, you go over "sleep rules", and reward the child for obeying the rules. However, it takes time for them to actually catch on, and tons of screaming. When the kid gets out of bed, you take them back to the bed without any emotion or reinforcement of the behavior. Anders got out of bed 16 times the first night and screamed like he was being tortured for a good portion of the process. It was about 2 in the morning. Our neighbors asked us what was going on. It took about 4 nights, and one relapse night this last week, but he's doing much better now. He runs into our room in the morning and says, "Mommy! I slept all through the night! Can I have a treat now?" I'm really glad we trained him as a baby how to sleep on his own, otherwise I think this little incident would have been much worse. It was pretty bad as it was, but I can't imagine having to start from scratch at 3 years old.

Nils' parents came to town today for a short visit, and Anders has been grinning ear to ear all night. We all went to a wedding reception for a friend from CT, then went to dinner after. Anders said, "I love you Nana. I love you GrandPar" over and over again. He got 4 ketchup packets and has been holding them like they're a rare gem all night. He's a funny kid. We've got a couple of funny kids, I tell ya.