Update from the Fire Lines

Just wanted to let you know how our friends are doing. I feel bad that I haven't updated you, but I wanted to be able to include how the fire started, and that's a very recent development.

The Bad News:

Their house is totaled.

It’s in the process of being taken down to studs (which whips up the fire smell on a regular basis). 99% of everything they owned is gone due to water, fire & smoke damage. Pix is from their daughter’s room and it makes me want to cry every time I see it. (It's a color pix, nothing was altered in the color or anything, that's just what it looks like now.)

The fire was arson & apparently the PD & FD feel they know who did it; some kid who has set other fires in the neighborhood. He’s currently detained for other things, but hasn’t been charged with this one yet. They have quite a bit of evidence so I think it’s probably a matter of time. He’s a foster kid, so I’m not sure it does anything for our friends. I don’t think there’s anyone they can sue or anything.

The Good News:

They have unbelievable insurance; their house and possessions are completely covered and there is also money for living and expenses while their out of their house. (Out for 10-12 months). They were able to rent a house on our street, which is amazingly lucky. The response of friends and family actually overwhelmed them. It finally got to the point where they had to tell people not to bring them anymore stuff. One of the other neighbors volunteered to collect the donations and several other neighbors helped with sorting, so in the end it was fine and quite a bit got donated to some very lucky charities too.

They are able to now remodel their house and update their kitchen, which was original (40 years old). Not the way you want that to happen, but it’ll be so nice when it’s done.

Emotionally they are hanging in there. They have good and bad days. I think it’ll be good once school starts and there’s more distraction to things.

The one bad thing is that now they are much farther down the street from us and I miss them a lot. I didn’t realize how many impromptu play dates we had just because the kids where playing out front.

All is well and everyone is safe and really that's all that matters.

Daddy’s on a Laundry Basket

I called DaddySpeak tonight to tell him of today’s happenings: BigSpeak started truly swimming freestyle in her lesson today; both arms out of the water, side-breathing and flip turns with continuing to swim! I’m sure the instructors thought I was on drugs I was so giddy. DS is a big water guy so I wanted him to know, you know he’s got another little fishy in the family to play with. While talking to him I informed him that LittleSpeak apparently misses him a lot, she’s constantly telling anyone who will listen that her “Daddy on a boat.”

DS: Littlespeak is saying this? Does she even know what a boat is?

Me: I was wondering what she thought she meant too, but now that I’m thinking about it, when I do laundry she’ll climb in the basket and I’ll ask her if it’s a boat and where she’s sailing to.

I think she envisions that he’s floating around in a laundry basket somewhere.

Reality Check

I want you to know I don’t begrudge my husband’s trip this week. I think it’s a cool trip and wish I was on it. I think it’s really neat his dad, brother and him and doing this together.
What I’m upset about is the lack of planning toward our family. You could say it’s not personal, his planning efforts can be lackluster about most things that aren’t work. You could, but it doesn’t make me feel better. And yes, you could say I’m a bit mad at myself for not riding him harder about it earlier. Even though he’s an adult and I “shouldn’t have to” remind (nag) him that’s our reality and I guess if the beach trip was that important I should been more of a pain in the arce about it.

“Mad is way too plain a word for how I feel!”

Yes, I’ve taken to quoting Fancy Nancy. But, truth be told, I am furious. I’ve been on DaddySpeak to make sure he scheduled the time off for a week this August so we could have a family vacation at the beach house. I finally emailed him the dates at work so he’d remember, and tonight he told me he didn’t think he could take it because he’ll only have been home a week from his sailing trip.

Yes, he’s taking a vacation.
He’s going sailing with his dad, brother and some other friends for a week in Vancouver. Sounds nice doesn't it?

Being the dutiful wife I offered for his mother to come see the girls during this time (she doesn’t boat; major motion sickness. HOWEVER, I do enjoy boating, but was not asked). It’s true that spending time with his parents has been known to put me over the edge in mental illness in the past. It’s not so bad these days (or hasn’t been, knock on wood) but this next week is NOT my idea of a break, much less a vacation. My initial reaction was to say that the girls and I will head over without him for the week. Then I started to really think about that & honestly, that’s not a break for me on any level. It’s a huge amount of work for me, so I don’t think that’s what we’ll be doing. I don’t know. Right now, what I do know is that I’d really like to smash my fist into someone’s face right now.

The cherry to my sundae is that BigSpeak decided to pull her usual, “I’m too tired” about picking up the playroom tonight. The room is actually not that big of a deal right now and would've taken like 2 minutes. But we made a deal awhile ago that they were going to start picking up the play room 2x a day without protests.

Yeah right, how’s that working for you?….Not so much.

Tonight when she started in I told her she had till the count of 3 to get in there and start picking up or she could go strait to bed. (I was already starting at pissed from my conversation with DaddySpeak.) She informed me she preferred to go to bed.

Mad is way too plain a word for how I feel right now.

Bonus points for you if you know which Nancy book that quote is from.

Slayed

Today the dragons slayed me.

At 2:00 today I’d hit my wall with the girls. They were tag teaming me; BigSpeak would whine for things and demand that she was “too tired to contribute” or that “it wasn’t fair”. LittleSpeak would just demand; if she asked for milk and you gave her milk, she would throw herself in a fit onto the floor because she wanted water!!!! “My God Woman, what is wrong with you! How could you give me milk!” At nap time she literally screamed her head off and threw herself against her crib so it would bang the wall...For. An. Hour! After an hour she’d started to climb out of her crib, and having hardwood floors I had to put the nix on that one. But even when I took her out of her room, did that make her happy? Noooooo. She wanted to go to swim lessons. NOW! Didn’t matter that we had over an hour yet. An hour during which she was supposed to be sleeping. I finally gave up. I grabbed all of our swim stuff , threw them in the car and drove out of our way to the mall because it has a drive-up Starbucks, and we had the time. They had stopped all their whining and fussing once in the car, so I got them each a “treat” and let them drink them at the pool while we waited for their lessons (we were still really early). After lessons I drove to our cabana pool and was so very grateful to see neighbors there, so they played for an hour and a half. We came home to start dinner and the whining commenced, but DaddySpeak showed up and played interference. Thank God!

I decided that what’s going on is that my daughters expect to be entertained every minute of every day, and when they aren’t happy with the entertainment, well I believe today was an example. I think I need to reset some expectations around here. (Theirs not mine.)

Of course, we’re headed to an amusement park tomorrow, so I guess the resetting will start on Saturday.

Slaying Dragons Still

I know I’ve still been pretty much MIA. The truth is I’m still not all that well yet. I’m still having issues with eating. Actually if I don’t eat I’m fine, which is a great weight loss plan. It just not so good when you're chasing kids.

Eventually, I get lightheaded from not eating (my blood pressure is normally on the low side) so I eat and then I’m nauseated. It’s So. Much. Fun!
Now, just to add to my fun, LittleSpeak seems to have picked this up from me. This weekend she ran about 103° on her own, and 101° w/Tylenol. This morning when I took her to the doctor she was normal. Of course. She alternates between bouncing off the walls and moaning in my arms. tonight she completely lost it. Just completely melted down. Wanted to be held by me, but I was not permitted to sit down. Now I needed to hold her and walk around with her. Poor baby. Poor Mommy. I got her fed early (scrambled eggs for breakfast) and she was in bed, passed out, by 6:15.
So, sadly Internet, I’m not intentionally neglecting you, I’m just exhausted. I seem to be a little better every day, so hopefully by the weekend I’ll be 100%. More later, I’m off to try and get some sleep so I can slay some dragons tomorrow.

Potty Watch 2008: Strike Two

I read Mike’s guest post related to potty training and it reminded me of one of LittleSpeak’s newest tricks in the potty training arena that I wanted to share.

LittleSpeak has shown us that she does know how to use the potty, (Yeah!) how to hold it and obviously how to frustrate her mother to no end. The other morning she showed me a new trick.

I was putting on my make up my room while LittleSpeak was playing in hers. I realized that things had gotten awfully quiet, which is never a good thing when you have a toddler in the house. I went into her room where she was laying on the floor. She had already removed her diaper and put it into the diaper genie (at least she's clean). Then, she had put a cloth diaper on the floor (something we use when we change her so the rug/furniture won’t get dirty) and was laying on it on her back attempting to put a clean diaper on the same way we do. She had her legs in the air as she tried to put the diaper underneath her bum. (Got to get them up to your ears honey!) Quite the scene.

I informed her that once she can diaper herself that’s when it’s time to start using the potty. She agreed, but has yet to completely comply.

If only she would use her powers for good instead of evil.
Yes, I do know it could’ve been much worse.

Milestones….and yes, we’ve melted

I’m better! Yeah! I was better and eating again as of last Friday (July 3). Hopefully it’ll hold. We had an amazing, relaxing, crazy, fun weekend at the beach. I have pix & if the stars all line up you may even get to see a few before Labor Day. ;-) But you know me, so don’t like bet on it or anything.
Big News! LittleSpeak hit TWO milestones today!
1. Used the potty on purpose today!!! Wahooooooo!!! It’s a step in the right direction. Now to get her to stop taking her damn diaper off all the time.
2. LittleSpeak climbed out of her crib today. I know, we’re so screwed. BigSpeak NEVER did anything like that at all. Shoot, I had her mobile up until close to her 2nd b-day. She was just a mellow, follow the rules kind of kid. (That’s over.) Little Speak , we knew was just a matter of time. We’ll see if falling out has curbed her from it, or if I’ll be making an emergency trip to Ikea soon.
Got to go to bed!! More soon. I promise.

Still Sick--not for the faint of heart or stomach.

Yes, I am still sick. It's been awful. I'm better in the AM & able to get the girls to appointments and such, but late afternoon/evenings do me in. I'm so nauseated it's not funny. I can't eat anything without feeling awful. I've been subsisting primarily on sugarless jello, string cheese, water and an occasional Diet Dr. Pepper (not necessarily all in one day). According to the doctor's scale (I went last Friday) I've lost 8 lbs. I'm so bloated you can't tell at all. I got some meds from the doctor to stop the bathroom action (TMI I know, you're welcome) which was good cause it scared me. I was so sick I was having trouble keeping me water up. He wanted me to go in for testing, but since the meds basically worked, I think it's just a really nasty virus.

But that's not the worst part. No the worst part is that now I think LittleSpeak may have caught this from me. She was super clingy/wanting to lay on me this afternoon. Finally she had one of the nastiest diapers ever known to mad.

Let's hope it was a one time thing.

Mama Doesn’t Get A Free Day

I’ve been nauseated since Sunday (it’s Wednesday). I’ve mostly been ok until I eat and then I need to lie down because I’m so very nauseated. Obviously, I’ve been mostly avoiding food. Last night it got really bad and didn’t matter if I’d eaten I was so sick. This morning it was still like that so I called my mom to see if she could take the girls for a couple hours and give me a break. She did, so I slept, and took a shower, but still it’s not good. I have only had a granola bar, some jello and a popsicle in the last 24 hours. That and about 7 gallons of water. I’m trying a couple crackers now, cause my stomach is churning on itself. So we’ll see. No sick days for Mama.

Fun Monday--the Fire Sale Edition

Don’t know if you heard, but Northern California is pretty much aflame. Seriously, I woke up with a sore throat from all the smoke in our air. It’s bad. Really bad. None of the fires are very close to us, but the wind is working against us as far as smoke goes. And, just for the record, the beach house has a fire just a few miles from it too, so going down there isn’t much help. Thus you get the fire sale edition of Fun Monday. cough, cough

After many weeks off I decided to participate in Fun Monday again. Fun Monday this week is hosted by Hula Girl at Heart, (go check her out for more on this topic and a really, really 90's wedding dress). The topic she gave us is:

Show us those pieces of clothing you just can't part with, whether you wear them or not. It might be your grandma's vintage wedding dress, a jacket from high school, a t-shirt from an old boyfriend or those jeans you hope to get back into some day. It could be anything. Most of us have something like that we can't seem to throw away.

I was going to participate in the Fun Monday by talking about my favorite outfit, which is a teal skirt & top. I got the outfit the spring Daddy Speak & I were engaged; so it’s 8-9 years old. I love it for a lot of reasons, mostly cause it’s gorgeous and my eyes turn the same color teal when I wear it. I wore it a lot and even took my engagement photos with DaddySpeak in it, so it’s memory is well preserved to me no matter what. Once I got pregnant with BigSpeak (6 years ago) I no longer fit in it. Or at least, no longer fit in it well. I hold on to it in the hope that I will get thin enough to get back into it, although I’m pretty sure even at a size smaller than it, my hips expanded enough so that it won’t fit “right”. But I still hope, a girl‘s gotta have a dream, right? Today I decided I’m going to give up that dream. Yup, just today I decided I’m going to get rid of it. Our friends who lost their house this weekend, I’m going to pass it on to them. Well to K, I don't think D would look that good in teal, I'm just saying... They have nothing now and it’s just sitting in my closet, waiting to eventually be passed on to Goodwill. Instead it’s going to get a new life. It holds such happy memories for me, it seems fitting that it should help her move forward into new happiness.

This is not the best pix of it, but the only I could find for now. Plus look at DaddySpeak w/his long hair! Being the Rock Star he is!

Welcome to the Freak Show

Today was so weird.

All last night & today our street has been a freak show; cars and people are constantly driving and walking by to see the destruction. The FD was here till well past midnight. The phone and cable companies have been working on lines all day. Our electricity came back around 9:30 last night, but it was well past noon before we had internet or cable. The burned out houses were boarded up by 6 this morning (DaddySpeak managed to slip in and get some photos,) and a cyclone fence with locks went up at some point during the day. People get out of their cars to peek through the fence.

Everything seems so surreal.

We had 5 parties today, we were only trying to make three of them, but I told DaddySpeak as we left, “I so don’t want to go anywhere today. I just want to stay around the neighborhood with people who know how I’m feeling. I want to close ranks with everyone here it just seems how it ought to be.” He said he felt the same way. We still had to go. It was fine. We even made the third party which was for the triplets. The majority of people were gone but it was good to be back by our house and with friends who understood our state of mind. One of the neighbors went out & got gift certificates (Target, Old Navy & Toys R Us) for D&K; the kids only have the bathing suits they were wearing at the pool when it all started. Tonight I walked over to her house to give her a check for my part. Our house was the closest of all our friends to the fire, but the smoke, apparently, drifted the away from us. Once I got past the houses I was overwhelmed w/the smoke smell. My nose started dripping uncontrollability and my eyes were watering. I can only imagine what it was like last night. We’re lucky on this front too; I tend to be very sensitive to things like smoke. If it had drifted our way I might be sleeping at my parents house for the next couple days. Several other neighbors happened to be heading to the same house as myself and we had an informal powwow for a half an hour or so. It was what I needed. To feel connected to these people who are feeling the same sense of survivors’ guilt I am. I’m glad it worked out that way.

I’m feeling so many things right now and it’s like I have no words to articulate the complexity of these feelings. I’m suddenly at such a loss of words.

Loss of Innocence

I’m sitting here drinking a mudslide in the heat, trying to get a buzz so I can forget a bit how much I care about what I’m going to tell you. As I sit here I’m also listening to the hum of six large fire engines in our street because some good friends lost their home today.

Today was a typical Friday for our neighborhood. This afternoon (after nap time) we headed out to the pool to hang out because it was HOT. It had to be very close to 100° today. I had stopped at Costco earlier & picked up a chicken to eat cold for dinner tonight. The neighbors behinds us (triplets) were there and so were A, C & their dad D. Mom would be there later after work w/KFC for the crowd. Kids played, we BS’d and shared snacks & beers. At 5:30 we looked toward our neighborhood and saw a huge black cloud rising quickly from some houses. The guys took off running (DaddySpeak was jumping backyard fences) leaving S (triplets mom) and I with 7 kids. And they didn’t come back. K (A & C’s mom) pulled up just as the guys were jumping fences, she was worried about her house. She was going to pull the KFC out & go check, but I told her I’m sure it’s fine, just go check & come back. She never came back! Now I’m getting a little worried, the guys ran over w/out anything but their swim trunks, no shoes and certainly no cell phones. Realizing this was serious and looking for some distraction, I pulled out our food and started feeding kids. K’s mom suddenly pulls up and we know D & K’s house is involved. Their mom packed up their stuff and took the kids to her house. The guys finally came back; it was D & K’s house (three doors down from us) and their next door neighbors, N (two doors down). The guys had been helping to actually fight the fire; unrolling & hooking up hoses and hosing down the house in-between ours and N’s. The fire had started between the two houses, but as of now do not know how or why. (Part of the reason there are still six large trucks out there is because they are working on finding out the why.) K & D’s bedrooms are a loss, the roof on that side collapsed. I imagine most of the stuff in the house has smoke & water damage, so what didn‘t get destroyed is probably mostly lost too. They do have some clothing and the most important irreplaceable stuff (baby mementos) were salvaged. Their dog, Leo, was in their bedroom and did not make it. I am overwhelmed with my feelings and can not begin to fathom how they are feeling right now. I had to explain to BigSpeak that one of her best friends just lost everything safe she knows. She doesn't really understand yet, and I'm sad that in short order she will. They are such babies still, they shouldn't have to understand how vulnerable we are yet.

I am grateful that they are all physically ok.
I am overwhelmed by the outpouring from the neighborhood already. (I’m sure they are too.)
I am grateful that it was not my home and my family.
I’m saddened that my child (BigSpeak) and one of her best friends (A) lost their sense of security in relation to their homes tonight.
I am hopeful that they will be blessed in the rebuilding of their home.
I pray that Leo didn’t suffer.
Mostly I am glad that all of us (their family and mine) are healthy and able to move forward together.

The picture is not of their house, I found it via an image search on yahoo.

Hot Gift

I know a week or two ago I was complaining about how it’s supposed to almost be summer & we are freezing over here! But this week the temperature has been creeping up and today we were about 95° . Not having AC we’re feeling a bit warm in the Speak household (the kids’ rooms are about 80° at 7:30 this evening). In this case the heat wave does have an upside?; my folks gave us a margarita maker last weekend. It was a late anniversary gift. Coincidently my folks are spending the night here; they’re having their house tented for termites, so we broke out the margarita machine (actually the thing is so freakn’ huge it has it’s own spot permanently on the counter!) No margaritas though, mudslides! Yeah Baby! YUM! Not low carb, but yummy.

Summer Vacation with a Vengeance!

This is our first week true week of summer vacation and we are at it with a vengeance!

On Monday we went to Happy Hollow. This is a park aimed at the under 5 set and is perfect for us. After 30+ years are they are gutting the place & redoing all of it starting in July, which is really very bittersweet. On one hand ,it’ll be really, really, really nice once it’s finished. On the other, this park is a place that anyone who grew up in the South Bay has visited as a child, and to have them change it now after all this time, is just sort of sad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure, safety wise the place is a nightmare, but still, I have pictures of both DaddySpeak and I as children riding the carousel, running in the maze, climbing the fire engine….so it’s melancholy. We’re trying to get in as many visits as possible before their close date.

Yesterday, we cleaned house and then cousin S came over for a playdate; after which you couldn’t tell I’d done any cleaning. It was fine, they just built a “carnival” in the front room using every toy in the house and utilizing every inch of space in our playroom. After the playdate we headed over to one of the neighbors for slip and slide and then take out Chinese. (I love summer!)

This morning we got up and picked up the playroom (took us 30 minutes, I set the timer in 10 minute increments) then headed off to Gilroy Gardens for the day. The girls slept the entire ride home.

Tomorrow we have gymnastics and swim lessons, and Friday is Gymboree.

Whew! If we keep up this pace I’ll be a size 4 in a month!

Typical Night at Home

DaddySpeak and I are having a typical evening at home.

Girls are asleep upstairs.
TV is on; watching Dirty Jobs.
He’s sitting on the love seat and I’m on the couch, we each like to stretch out and have a blanket (cause we're true romantics). AND...

We each have a laptop going; I’m digi-scrapping, he’s cruising the Internet.

Romantics at heart, that's us!

No, we are not emailing each other!

Odd Man Out

Sigh.

Sometimes this parenting thing can be so hard. And they're only 5 and 2! I'm not sure how to help BigSpeak, she's super sensitive and not mature enough emotionally to deal with all the things she picks up on.

This afternoon we had a lovely low-key Father's Day with about 5 other neighbors at our neighborhood pool. We'd all agreed to a BYOM (Bring Your Own Meat) Potluck. BYOM is explainatory, potluck=sidedish to share. It was going great till we realized that the pool's BBQ is missing it' s propane tank. No problem we moved it to one of the neighbor's backyards. After everyone had finished eating the kids were playing inside and one of the girls announced we were getting a dance show. When the kids assembled to do the show BigSpeak hung back by the parents. I asked her if she was going to go with the kids and she burst into tears. She was so upset that I had to take her inside so I could get her to calm down. The explination I got was that she didn't know how to do what they were doing and wanted to do it at home. I told her that was fine & got her to calm down. She watched the "show" w/the adults, but was still unhappy. When we got home, as promised, we got our dance show. She beamed while dancing for just us.

I don't know if she was just:

• Overtired (likely)


• Upset because it seemed the kids had paired off & she was somewhat of the odd man out. (I think she picked up on this but may not have understood why this upset her.)


• Being the perfectionist and not wanting to do something until she knew she could do it perfectly. (This one has been a big problem in the past, and hasn't reared it's head for a while.)

I'm sure it's a combination of the 3, the later two concerning me greatly. There's so many ramifications to being a perfectionist like that. I mean, Dude, you're only 5, if you're putting this much pressure on yourself now, how are top it by age 13? And the feeling left out thing, I know it's something we all go through, but the cliquiness that has started already, it scares the crap out of me.

I just want to gather her up in my lap and hold her. She looks so much older than her barely 5YO self, and she's still such a little girl. I want to protect her from all those mean things that rotten kids will inevitably say to her, (because kids are mean and will do that,) and the snubs that will be put her direction (because she's sensitive and will wear her feelings making herself an easy target). I just want to hold her close and make it OK.

Most of the time she's such a happy, carefree little girl and it hurts me to see these types of things chipping away at that. I want to tell her it will be OK, and know that it really will be for her. How do you help your child develop a thick skin, without chipping away at that the pure innocence that believes everyone is nice?

I watch her sleep and she's still such a baby. The world is asking her to grow up too fast and I want to protect her from that.

We made it.

Schools out (as of Wednesday) and I’m now feeling like I can breath again. Note: the next time I decide to initiate a school project with less than 2 weeks left in the school year just take a gun to my head ok? I’m obviously loopy. You see, I decided that a scrapbook would make a really nice teachers gift. Being that I was working most of the year & wasn’t able to get into the class and take lots of pictures. Brilliant me! I thought I’ll get everyone else’s pictures. This really was a great idea, if I had like a month left, which I did not. I did not let that deter me. And in the process I offered to set up a class gift as well. Because, well because I am obviously short a few brain cells.
Short story long, I was able to get quite a few pix from other parents, I now the name of every kid in my daughters class. I created a really nice (if I do say so myself) album for each teacher and collected enough money for a really nice gift card ($100+) and box of Godiva (dipped fruit, yum!) for each of them. I lost a bit of sleep (try 4 nights up till 2-3AM and Monday was till 4 AM). But I think they really appreciated it. And I enjoyed playing Santa. So that’s the reasons I’ve been MIA the last couple weeks. In the meantime some bullet points on what you’ve missed:

• Headed to the beach house for the weekend last weekend & had So. Much. Fun!


• BigSpeak lost a second tooth. And I do mean lost. So far, the Tooth Fairy is getting gypped.


• BigSpeak has officially graduated from Pre-K.


• Major neighborhood drama between moms & girls (not together, that would be too exciting); the fun never ends here.


• LittleSpeak bit her sister & broke skin the other morning (she wanted the step stool BigSpeak was one, note there are two of them.)


• I got to view the photos I had done with the girls a few weeks ago and OMG! Lets just say the photo studio is having a very Merry Christmas based on what we’re spending.

All right, the neighborhood pool is open now & the girls are jonesing to go again. More later! Happy Summer!

Shhhhh......

Yeah, OK a pix of her sleeping would've been way more appropriate for this post, I agree. However, I have discovered, upon looking at my photo library, that my child rarely sleeps. Thus, I have no recent pix of her sleeping. After reading what I have to say below, you will completely understand why I am NOT going to got take a pix her right now (and risk waking her up.) I love you Internet, but a mama's gotta sleep too.

She's sleeping w/out her binky right now! I know, who would've thunk it?
DaddySpeak took her to a friends house today during nap time (I was having tea at the Fairmont, cause I'm all Fancy Nancy like that). Since we had a b-day party at 4 I made it clear that she needed to nap. That was fine, friends own a port-a-crib. They also have daughters the same age as ours, so big girls could play while little ones napped. Ahhh, but DaddySpeak forgot to bring a bink. She cried. But he was surprised at how short it lasted, less then 10 min total (and that included him going in once to make sure she wasn't climbing walls). So I was inspired and tonight at bedtime I asked her if she was ready to send them off to the Bink Fairy. I got an enthusiastic "babies", meaning that's who would get them. I agreed that the mythical babies would get her binks. That was that. I rocked her a little, but she wasn't completely alseep, I put her in her crib, gave her Sally (favorite doll), a blanket and she rolled over & went to sleep w/out a peep.

My fingers are crossed that she won't wake up at 2 AM screaming cause she can't find it.

Sigh, she's really not a baby anymore.

I Meant to Write.....

So I've had good intentions, but you know the drill; "I wuz bizeeee!"

Yes, well the outlaws left on Tuesday & I'm still recovering. I happen to choose their visit as the time to run out of the anti-anxiety/PPD pills my dr had me on for PPD. Yeah, I know my kid is two, I was supposed to be weaning off of them, I just got distracted. Not great timing for me, you think? So I'm feeling a little anxious...actually just my brain starts to race most of the time & I feel like I'm having dizzy spells a lot. It's like Disneyland, without the metal detectors or high prices.

In other news...
I did get my laptop back. Yeah!
But our WiFi network has been reconfigured since it was out and I need to reconfig the network and/or laptop again. Boo! So yeah, a couple more days on that one still. But hey, it's getting close.

This is a message I emailed to friend just before this post, it'll give you an idea of what my week has been like:

Got your phone message, but this afternoon was KRAZZZEEE! (That would be a special kind of crazy w/a capital K, in case you didn't notice.) LittleSpeak is still recovering from the fact that her G'parents have left and the world no longer revolves directly around her. Perhaps you felt the Earth's axis shift? I'm sure you heard her screaming her displeasure over it. I'm pretty sure everyone in a 5 mile radius heard her screaming her displeasure about it.

Yeah, that's pretty much my life right now. We're in the process of trying to reset from the G'parents visit. That, and LittleSpeak is teething (two-year molars, whoo!) so there was a 48 hour period this week in which I'd had a total of 7 hours of sleep (not all in one stretch, jeez, you're optimistic). Last night was better, I got 7 total hours, now we just need to work on the whole getting at 5:30 AM thing with her and we'll be golden.

Hoping to get the b-day party pix up this weekend, so really cute ones, not just of my kids although if I don't say so myself....