My lack of focus post...with Pictures!

Quick, gratuitous baby picture to distract you into forgiveness for my lack of blogging lately. Go ahead, tell me she’s beautiful, I already know it, but you can tell me again. ;-) Know what? She sleeps as well as pretty as she is; now you can hate me. (Did that make sense, probably not, but I think you get what I mean.) Now to get you to read on, there’s more pix below. I’m stealthy like that.

I know it’s been a while. The heat has finally gone away & we're back to normal. Thank God! Lucky for all of you at Blogher. And on that note, I’m pouting about not being at Blogher, but all things considered I’m not sure how much I really would’ve gotten out of it right now, and we can’t afford it, so I guess it’s for the best. I’m still pouting though.

I’m having a really hard time with focus these days. I have a huge sense of being overwhelmed still a lot of the time. Things are better then they were, but nowhere near where I want them to be. I keep trying to remind myself that things are better and that means I just need to be patient, but I’m not a very patient person. A result of this is that I’ve falling into one of my worst habits; staying up really, really late. (note it's 2 AM now.) It wouldn’t be so bad except that it’s extremely disruptive to my health and sanity. I can’t make up the sleep because BS gets up to eat between 5:30 and 7:00 every morning. When you go to bed at 2 AM & get up at 5:30 there’s a reason for feeling overwhelmed. Duh! I’m working on making myself get to bed earlier, but it’s really hard for me. It’s not in my nature and just like some people will over eat, drink, do drugs, etc…when they’re stressed out, I will stay up late. It’s an avoidance thing I guess, although I’m not really sure why I avoid going to sleep. Years ago it was because I couldn’t sleep, so being tired, but not being able to sleep would stress me out, but that’s not a problem (knock on wood) right now. Being overwhelmed means that I have trouble getting the basic things done like housework, much less getting time to blog; my lame excuse du jour. I’m working on it. I’m hopeful that soon my life will have more structure and I will be bloging regularly. (ha,ha,ha,ha,ha….) The last several days have been better, so maybe even by the end of next week. Poor DS bares the brunt of all of this. I can be such a be-yoch to him. In my defense often times it’s because I’m in the middle of being overwhelmed & he’s snuck off to the computer upstairs to zone out on FARK. (He has all day at work to do that!!!) It’s not fair to him, but I think he knows my sense of being overwhelmed so he lays low and rides it out. He’s a good guy.

You know I’ll finally find a groove the week before I have to go back to work. But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I can already tell it’s going to be a problem this go around. It was ok when I did it with TS because it was at 6 weeks and she wasn’t really doing anything yet. By the time she got to be “fun” I’d been back to work for several weeks already. Plus last time DS had been laid off of work a month prior to TS’s birth so I really didn’t have an option about going back, I needed to. This time the need part is a little more gray area then that. We can make it on DS’s paycheck alone, but we aren’t putting anything away and we can’t do much more then pay the mortgage & eat. So, God forbid something happens (car craps out, dog needs surgery…oh yeah) cause that’s the kind of stuff my paycheck covers.

BS hit her 3 month mark on Thursday. These are the portraits I had taken. This one is being used in her birth announcement.

She’s amazing. She’s really sweet, she sleeps great, pretty much on a feeding schedule and is really good natured. She’s also army crawling!!! I put her on her stomach on her boppy yesterday and she pushed herself up and over it. She would’ve landed on her head if I hadn’t been there. She scares me; she going to do stuff like crawl early I think. And she ADORES her big sister. She beams at her now, just beams. It’s really nice. I’ll have to mark this entry so a year or two from now when they’re driving each other nuts (instead of just me) I can come back to read it. Alright, one last picture and I’m head to bed.

Hot, Hot, Hot!!!

I’ve been around, just not on the internet. You see, I live in the part of California that

MELTED THE “F”AWAY!
Right into hell.
It’s so F’ing HOT I can’t begin to tell you.

I know it’s hot everywhere, including where you are, but WE DON’T HAVE AIR CONDITIONING here because it doesn’t get hot like that! At least it didn’t used to get hot like this. I’ve mentioned before that computer is upstairs in the hottest room in the house. Well we pretty much closed off the upstairs this week. Seriously. We’ve been sleeping in the playroom. All of us. Together. I get up at 5 AM (when it's only 98 degrees up there) get our clothes and rush down stairs in a sweat and that’s pretty much the extent of my time upstairs this last week. So remind me, why did we pay how much for a 2400 sq ft house, only to be able to use 1200 sq ft of it???
Anyway, no blogging for me this week. (Said much like the Soup Kitchen Nazi would say it.)

Actually, no computer time at all, so if you sent me an email don’t take it personally that I haven’t answered you, because I haven’t read it yet. (And I haven’t checked email yet, so you all should feel special Internet. Priorities you know.) I know I shouldn’t complain at least we have electricity. This has happened to people in our neighborhood and since it’s all local transformers there’s no timeframe on when they’ll get their power back. So our friend actually have AC, but can’t use it. Let it be said, God has a sense of humor.

So why am I back if it’s so damn hot? (Hey we’re on a cooling trend, it’s only going to be 100 tomorrow. Yes, seriously, we’re down to 100.)
I GOT A NEW COMPUTER!!!
DOWNSTAIRS!!!
Yeah, for me. Now I can blog again, and check my email at normal times of day, sort of.

Ok, so now that I’m done braging I need to wipe down my new keyboard (sweat you know) and go see what important things I haven’t been aware of because of my lack of email access.

More later, for real!!!

Craig’s List

I’m addicted. A couple weeks ago I got on there to purchase a bouncy seat for my mom. She can’t find hers (we think she must’ve gotten rid of it, which is weird cause she doesn’t get rid of anything). So I found one for $8 (these normally run between $25-$45 depending on what bells and whistle it has). Before taking it over to my mom’s house I moved it to our upstairs. I liked not having to move ours up and down the stairs so much that I decide it was ours & got back on Craig’s List & got her another one. (This time for $10.)

Now, I’m in the neighborhood for a second boppy pillow. I have one I use for nursing , but they’re also great for propping the baby up to sit and “tummy time” play. This go around I got a cover that has toys attached to it so the baby has something to reach for while being mad that you’ve put her on her tummy. Thing is, I’m not that inclined to change the pillow cover all that often. And so to Craig’s List I go. I’m working on getting a free one right now, but I may end up pay $5 for one as that’s that person who has gotten back to me. Either way it’s once again, a huge bargain. I love a good bargain, (really who doesn't?) and Craig’s List is better then EBay because it’s local so instant gratification. I’m all about instant gratification.

So need me to find anything for you? I’m sure they have it on Craig’s list, for cheap!

New Time Suck

My time on the computer is so limited now and I’ve found those DIS boards which is where I seem to be heading whenever I’m still nursing and have read all my emails. (Doesn’t look good for my blogging does it?) Part of the problem is knowing the right questions to ask. There are TONS of tips and tricks to getting into/around Disney and avoiding lines, eating cheap, getting in on special promos, etc….But you need to know enough to even ask the question about them. I wish there were some list that linked you to these different areas so you could at least have a sense of what to ask. If you have any tips/advise dear Internet please do pass it on, every little bit helps. Expect to hear more about the Mouse House over the next month or so. I am super excited about this trip –can you tell? I think I will include anything I find especially interesting/excting/cool in my blog (I’ll block it out with the title Mouse Ears so you’ll know) so here’s your first one:

Mouse Ears:

I found this really cool thing on the message boards called “paying it forward” (PIF). The deal is that when a person goes to DL (or WDW) they post their dates & offer to PIF, which means the first 3 people who email them will get sent postcards from a character in the park . In most cases the idea is that the character will tell the recepient how excited they are about them coming to see them on the dates they’re scheduled to come. I think this is soooo cool!!! I totally signed up w/someone to have this done for TS. Can’t wait to see her face.

Also found out about Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique from a cousin at the reunion. (You must check out the pix here.) I have since found out that this is only in WDW. Sigh, so sad. I would’ve been all over this as a kid (and I hear adults can do this too, so if they had it at DL there’s a chance I would’ve done it w/TS. Note, the child would've been into it, I doubt highly that my folks would've paid for it.) Anyway, if you have girly girl (aka—princess) and I do, they you would probably be interested in this.

Other things:

Still working on the pix from the Colorado (family reunion). The gist of the trip is that it rained a lot (that’s our luck, CO is having a drought & we manage to go during the one week of rain they’ve had in years) and that we didn’t sleep much. BS was held ALL. DAY. LONG. so at night she wanted the same treatment. NOT. Anytime we’d put her down she’d start to cry. Under normal circumstances, not a problem, I have no issue with letting my child cry a little when I know she doesn't need anything, but the four of us were sharing a room and we didn’t want her to wake up TS. The end result was very little sleep for me. She ended up sleeping in her bouncy chair next to the bed, so if she fussed I could either give the chair an extra bounce with my foot (quiets her and if done long enough will actually put her to sleep) or nurse her. One night (at about 3AM) she did wake up TS, so DS was laying on the floor next to the bouncy chair rocking it trying to get BS back to sleep and I was in bed w/TS trying to get her back to sleep. BS gets up at 6 AM so not much sleep for me. As soon as we got home she went right back to her old schedule. Little turkey. I laid her down in her crib the first night & instead of crying she rolled on her side & went to sleep. I’m thankful I don’t have to “retrain” her on this front, but I need to find a new strategy for DL as we’ll be doing the family room share thing again. (Hopefully the fact that we’ll be so busy during the day will help. Not so much sleeping in people’s arms on that trip.)

BS, BTW, just gets more and more adorable every freaking day. She has to be upright after she eats (the reflux thing) so she sits in her chair next to me in the AM while I puruse the Web. She's playing w/the toy bar on her chair & just going to town on it; she can pull the characters with her feet and get it to play music. She likes to "talk" (coo) at the characters and beams when she gets them "talk back" (play music).

Ok, I’ve way surpassed my 10 min mark on computer time this AM. More later!

Should be….

It’s going to be over 100 here today. Hotter then hot. TS is in “school” so I can “get some things done” for a change. Since it’s going to be so damn hot & we don’t have AC I should get anything done upstairs like an hour ago. But what am I doing???? Catching up on my blogs—very productive. I’m also reading Disney message boards (we’re going in Sept.) so I’m vacation planning, right? AND I'm watching BS in her bouncy chair next to me--the kid is going nuts playing with the toys on her toy bar. Very happy baby! I love happy babies!

Here’s the list of what I should be doing:

• Vacuuming upstairs (leaving the cats alone in our bedroom for a week has created quite a few new pets: Dust Bunnies!
• Vacuuming downstairs (we’re just generally dirty)
• Dusting
• Mopping (can you say hardwood floors)
• Paying bills
• Uploading vacation photos
• Picking up new computer (long story, but I’m getting one for free from a friend for downstairs—it may even improve my blog updating)
• Finishing unpacking (mine stuff—I made sure I unpacked everyone else’s stuff first thing)
• Cleaning mirrors (something I needed to do before we left)
• Birth announcements (no, I haven’t done these yet. I don’t want to hear about it. Etiquette says I have up to 6 months, I looked it up.)
• Calling to preview new preschools/daycares (TS’s doesn’t take infants)

There’s more, but I really feel like I need to start some of it. I’ll (hopefully) get that computer & write more later. Maybe I'll even upload our 300+ photos and post one or two for you. Don't hold your breath. ;-)

We're Baaack!

And the word of the day this week was RAIN and lots of it, except, of course, on the last day. Gotta love it when your vacation is spent w/a toddler and it rains every day. I'll have to write more later internet. Just wanted to let you know the Speak's are back in town and all survived.

Neglect

Yes, Internet I’ve been neglecting you. My apologies, I’d have to say it’s the word of the week; Neglect. DS was home from Friday through Tuesday and instead of feeling like we got all this stuff done, I felt a lot like I had one more kid to pick up after. I have lots of examples, but because of time I guess let’s just say, I’m feeling very neglected. We had a really busy weekend and we’re going to a family reunion (his family) next week so this week has been hectic to say the least. Because of it, even my griping tonight is going to be super quick. Bah! So next week don’t expect much either. Sorry. If I can find an internet café there’s a decent change I may be able to post, but that would mean all the stars, planets, earth, sun & moon would have to be aligned, and you know how that usually goes.

I think my mom might be right about the PPD, I've been a bit of a basket case the last couple weeks. I guess we’ll see how I’m feeling about it after next week. If I do have it, a week in a hotel room with my outlaws will definitely put me over the edge; Happy, happy, joy, joy for everyone. Either way should make for some good blog fodder, right? It's all about the blog fodder.

Just to hold you over, here’s some gratuitous kid pix. I’ll try to post before we leave again, but don’t hold your breath. I’d offer to hide you in my suitcase, but with a toddler & baby in tow, I’m not sure how well we’re going to do packing-wise as it is, so maybe you can go with us next time. I’ll miss you & I’ll do my best to keep in touch.

Yes, yes, I know my children are beautiful, but feel free to tell me again. ;-) (hee, hee)