Blogging has been on the back-burner lately. Or at least the kind of blogging that takes any thought effort besides rehashing the events of the day. Sorry about that. I’m still growing and learning new things (probably more now than ever), just in the context of extreme busyness and always on the verge of total stress.
But.
I thought you’d like to know that when we stopped at the North Battleford McDonald’s on the way home on Sunday, I climbed four levels up in the play structure. To save Olivia. It wasn’t pretty. But at least I didn’t get stuck in those silly tube stairs. You probably had to be there to get the full effect of what I did. But I’m glad you all weren’t.
Wasn’t much of a patriotic day today around these parts. We started the day with a meeting with the real estate agent we’ve hired. She was supposed to come yesterday. Besides spending all day Monday (and hiring a babysitter to come over to the house so I could get things done) getting the house completely clean after the post-garage-sale-and-weekend-away-disaster that it was, I spent most of Tuesday morning getting things ready for the agent to come see the house for the first time. She had a major family emergency and so we met with her associate this morning (which meant re-cleaning the house again last night and this morning). I, of course, decided to paint Olivia’s room last night and did the second coat as soon as I got up this morning. It was all done before the realtor arrived.
After she was gone we fed the kids, got them resting in anticipation of the late-night fireworks tonight, and tried to rest ourselves. I didn’t get much rest. Whatever. Marc’s done work on Friday. We’ll rest then. Well, after the two people who’ve already asked to see the house on Saturday through our SaskHouses listing. I hope agents don’t start bringing people until we’re out the door on our three week holiday next Tuesday. That was always the plan. I don’t need to be stressing about keeping the house clean when I already need to pack for a three week vacation and have to get the house in “show home” condition for the weeks we’re gone.
Anyway.
We decided to go to the beach after supper. I’m going to miss having a beach 20 minutes away from our front door. It was nice. The kids are all at good beach ages right now and they were content there from 5:30pm until after 8pm. Then we ran home to change, got a few things at Walmart, and went to the fireworks. The kids were in bed at 11pm. Because Olivia slept in Madeline and Luke’s room last night, it took them over two hours to fall asleep last night. They’re going to have to catch up on their sleep soon. For Marc’s and my sake at least.
Here are the pictures from the day. And you can go back to look at Canada Days of yester-year here and here. They grow up so fast.
Three mud baths.
The favourite toy of the day: sand balls.
Olivia’s brave in the water this year.
Love the progression of their faces in these last pictures:
Alright. So I wore the black dress. Bonnie and I were at Superstore the night before the trip and we found a blue dress that was a little less formal and pretty flattering, but in the end I went with the black one. It was almost a horrible experience, but I got over it eventually. I just let the cleavage hang out there all day and tried not to worry about it too much. Marc tried to get a good picture, but I just can’t stand there and pose and try to look all whatever. So this is the best picture you’re going to get:
Ya, I forgot my curling iron and mousse. So I didn’t look as “wedding”-y as I’d hoped. But I did what I could with Simon’s wife curling iron (who we finally met and who gave us breakfast!!). Oh, and then my hairspray bottle ended up being empty. So I pretty much just got drops of hairspray all over my shoulders.
Anyway. Enough of the excuses. It was a fun day. Marc took the kids home half way through the reception so I spent the night dancing with my cousins and a couple of aunts. Some good times. Even if I’ll never dance like my aunt from Nigeria…
And I actually like this last one. Besides, it’s pretty true to the day: Olivia crawling on me, Luke making silly faces, and my cleavage being far more out there than it’s ever been. Enjoy it while you can. I’m pretty sure they won’t be out for another decade.
Tomorrow afternoon Marc and I and the kids will head out to St. Albert for my cousin’s wedding. Yes. I’m wearing the black dress. And yes, I’ve found some good, summer-y accessories thanks to the girl at the Gap in Saskatoon. But, in order to look a little better in the dress I decided to use some self-tanner (the one my magazine said was best).
Long story short.
I woke up yesterday morning and Madeline said I was turning into a tiger. It was horrible. I’ve done the self-tanner thing before, but this one was a glove and I guess I was too afraid to press hard enough and I ended up striped — all over my body. So not good. Three days before the wedding.
Marc, of course, was thoroughly annoyed because he thinks I should just be who I am. Be my pale self and be happy. To which I respond, “Easy for you to say! He whose butt is more tanned in the dead of winter than I would be spending a week on the beach.”
My solution last night was to get in the tub and exfoliate again. No colour came off. Shoot. So I decided to reapply the tanner, putting more on the white stripes and then going over everything evenly one more time. Needless to say I was extremely nervous about how I’d look when I woke up in the morning.
One glove application is supposed to last seven days, so I was pretty worried about putting two applications on my pale skin two days in a row. I had visions of now being dark orange and light orange-striped. But at least I’d have two days of lemon baths to try to fix it before I had to wear the dress.
However, I am very lucky this morning and it appears that the only stripes left are on my upper leg which won’t be seen unless I go to the pool. Oh man! I am so happy right now.
Now Marc has a hot tanned wife, instead of a striped one. And he’ll probably still be my date to the wedding.
And to put it in perspective. After two consecutive coatings of seven-day self-tanner, my arms are now the same colour as Madeline and Olivia’s, who’ve had SPF 60 on every time they’ve gone into the sun. But that’s what I get for being born English and Norwegian. At least I’m not part-tiger anymore.
Wedding pictures will be up when it’s all over.
(Okay, after spending two hours outside in natural light, there is definite striping, but it’s nowhere near as bad as yesterday. Whatever. That’s what the scarf is for.)
I must admit that I never used to be a fan of my kids from the ages of 18 months to 4 years. Yes, I understand that that is a big spread of time. What I think it was is that those are some pretty formative years where kids learn about boundaries, expectations are placed on them for the first time, and I found it hard to deal with all of the disobedience and the mental exhaustion of setting boundaries every time they were in a new situation which at that age is what? every five minutes?!
I remember Madeline freaking out right before the guests arrived at her second birthday because I was putting a clip in her hair. With Luke I don’t remember the disobedience as much as I remember him being extremely active and wanting to get into everything, and, of course, being too heavy for me to manhandle. And when those two were just barely two we were bringing the next baby into the house, which makes for less time and energy and all the rest.
I have been enjoying Olivia more, for many reasons. I’ve learned to appreciate the stages of the kids more. I’ve learned a lot about grace and making mistakes and not needing to be perfect and have applied that to the way I raise my kids. And, of course, not having an 9 pound baby in my belly or lactating breasts will give anyone a little more stamina.
However. This week our sweet, little Olivia has officially reached the “terrible twos”. In a big way. I’ll give you one example.
We all had to be out the door before 8:45 this morning. Olivia loves to stay in her pyjamas all day, and some days I let her, but not today. I changed her diaper. Gave her one chance to pick her clothes, but she declined and said she needed her “jammas”. I told her “no” which made her instantly mad. So I ripped the pyjamas from her fist, threw them in the playpen in her room, grabbed a shirt and pants and started putting them on her. She screamed. And screamed. And kicked and clenched and contorted her body making it impossible for me to get the clothes on.
I got the pants on after much struggling. She tried to pull them off. But I put her on my lap to get her shirt on before she could do it. She grabbed the shirt from the inside once it was on her arm so I couldn’t pull it down. It took Marc and I together to finally get her dressed. And, like I said, she was screaming and freaking out the whole time.
I set her down on the ground and she was still screaming mad. So I put her on her bed (she’s in a toddler bed now) and told her she had to calm down. I closed the door to her room and left her to calm down. I don’t know how many minutes passed — maybe 5 before she stopped yelling. Awhile after that, I went in there to find that she had taken off her shirt and put it back in the storage container under her bed, taken her pants off, moved her Sit-n-Spin so she could climb into the playpen, and there she was sitting holding her pyjamas. That is determination.
I took her out and she told me she would wear her green pants. So I put those on her instead. And we were out the door in time.
It will be nice when she’s out of this stage (and on to the next one with its own set of annoyances).
Well. What a day. I’ve never done that before! We were up until almost 1am last night getting things organized for the garage sale this morning.
Part of that was due to Marc having to work late, someone wanting to see the house (at the last minute) at 7pm, me taking people to the airport in Saskatoon so I hadn’t been home since 9am and so the entire house (!!) needed a very quick tidying, and me having to be at a meeting at 8pm.
Of course part of it was also that we had so much stuff that we could hardly organize things until the outside stuff got outside which we couldn’t do until the morning. And when we woke up this morning and it was lightly raining and the sky was full of clouds, we were not completely impressed. Kind of worried, in fact, because the garage was full, packed,no room to walk even, and we still had all of the furniture we were going to sell to bring out.
But the clouds parted mid-morning, right about the time people started showing up — a good two hours ahead of when we were officially “open”. We were out setting up and we weren’t going to send them away. I’d say we had about half of our big items sold before noon. But, boy, did I feel bad when 1pm rolled around (when we were set to open) and car after car started driving into our tiny cul de sac and all of those things we’d advertised in the paper were long gone.
It was a good hour of straight and complete madness. Before and after that there were just bursts of madness. But from 12:30 to 1:30. Wow. It was crazy.
We still go tomorrow in the morning, and I’ve invited my brother to bring over stuff to sell because otherwise there will be hardly anything for people to buy. We sold so much stuff today. The kids now have nothing in their bedrooms except their beds and a toy bin (which is all they have room for in the trailer in Manitoba). The living room is looking rather bare. (Lauralea “your chair” hasn’t sold yet, even at the low-low price of $5.00. Perhaps you should re-upholster it in green?!) We did well. Not much bartering because we had such low prices. And we made a pile of money. It makes you wonder what we could’ve made if we’d priced things not dirt-cheap. But it was all sold quickly and easily, and that makes it worth it!
Some thoughts on the day:
Having that many people to interact with in a day means that some awkwardness is inevitable.
Like the lady whose very nicely french-manicured toes I almost ran over with a Rubbermaid container. I don’t think I even touched them, but I could’ve. And she looked pretty upset. I apologized profusely and multiple times and I think she calmed down.
Then there was the girl who I thought I was giving a deal to because I only asked for $1.00 when her purchase actually was $1.25. However, she thought her total was $0.75. (She thought the matching hat was just thrown in with the dress, even though the bin was marked $0.50 each.) But we never communicated that outright to each other. In the end she handed me the dollar and appeared to storm off — when she had just got a $20 dress and hat (worn maybe 5 times) and a brand new box of clothes pins for $1.00!
And what could’ve been a disastrous moment, monetarily speaking: the two ladies paying at the same time. Woman A’s bill was $4.00. Woman B’s was $1.50. Woman A hands me $20. And I call for Marc to get change. Woman B starts talking and says she has the right change, so I hand her the $20 (thinking she’d given it to me but realized after that she had enough change). I take Woman B’s $1.50. And Woman A asks for her $16.00 change. “Did you give me $20?” I said. “Yes.” I get confused. Look in my pockets but there is no $20. I check again. Ask her again. “Yes. I gave you $20.” A bit more confusion and slight panic. Then I ask Woman B if I happened to have given her the $20. She looks in her change pocket and, sure enough, it’s there. — Crisis averted. Barely. And luckily. We could’ve been out $16! And Woman B would’ve been up $20.
Anyway. That was the day. All of the preparation was actually quite fun. And it was nice talking to people. The weather was beautiful. The kids did so well. (After this week, we are going to spend so much time with them, to make up for all of the craziness of the past two months!) We counted the money together tonight, which was more about the counting and less about the money. (The kids love to count.)
And now Marc’s in the backyard visiting with a fellow Providence seminarian. And I’m going to lay down and (if I have the energy) watch a movie. Actually. First I guess I’ll head down to Walmart to return something and get some iced tea for the stand Madeline wants to set up and sell at $0.50 a glass tomorrow. (Saving for a DS one glass of iced tea at a time.)
When I get home from Walmart, I will try and ignore the two days-worth of dirty dishes on the counter and just go lay down. We can wash a few bowls for cereal in the morning.
I guess it’s because (besides doing about a 1,000 things that I won’t get into here) we’ve been preparing for the largest garage sale in the history of mankind. It’s true!
This Friday from 1:00pm to 7:00pm and Saturday 9:00am to 12:00pm
854 Conroy Place (which is a cul de sac on Grey Owl Crescent)
Come. If only to verify the fact that I am selling everything from bookcases to complete Fischer Price Little People sets for the price of a McDonald’s value meal.
(This was Olivia tonight as we were getting set up and had to take the seats out of the van to bring some tables, etc over to the house.)
It is Saturday morning, and he gets up (in a Nyquil-induced stupor) to go to the bathroom. I roll over to his side of the bed, open his bedside table and reach for his iPod Touch. He returns to the bed quickly. The phone rings. While I am on the phone,
He steals the iPod.
Soon he is finished and passes it to me. I check my morning Bloglines. The Twitter application is broken for some reason — has been since yesterday. There is nothing left to check. I’m finished in about two minutes. Still, that is enough time for Marc to have fallen back asleep.
I place the iPod in the crook of his neck and get up to feed the children Lucky Charms. Before I have retrieved my bathrobe and left the room, Marc has put the iPod in its proper place, back in that little plastic pencil bucket in his side table, yet is still sleeping.
The children (and their two cousins who are spending the weekend with us) eat half a giant box of Lucky Charms for breakfast. I pour a bowl for myself while I still have the chance. (I also put a load of laundry in the dryer and one in the wash.)
I return to the bed. It’s been about 20 minutes. Marc is on his iPod again. I lay down next to him and he asks about the YouTube clip I was watching this morning. He starts watching it, but it freezes. YouTube does that on his iPod. He sets the iPod down to charge.
It is just the two us. The children are still laughing at the kitchen table. I eat my cereal. He complains that the rug burns he got at last night’s youth get-together hurt ever time he turned over in the night. I ask him to explain the games they played at youth. He tells me to stop talking. Or at least stop asking him to explain things.
But he tells me he likes the way I am tickling his chest.
Marc is beautiful. He has such a large torso it takes the full extension of my arm just to tickle his back. (Will he ever realize what an effort it is for me — the back tickling?) His face is relaxed. He has the perfect amount of chest hair. And I have always loved how strong his shoulders are. His skin is so soft on his shoulders.
I tickle his chest and his shoulders and eat my cereal in silence.
With Luke’s preschool memory book was included a cd of pictures from the year. I was looking through them tonight and remembered again why I had really wanted to go on his class trip to the bowling alley. It’s been kind of frustrating this year to not be able to go on some of the kids’ class trips, but that’s just life with three kids. Still, the trip to the bowling alley was one I had really wanted Marc or I to go on, but I’m pretty sure it happened the day we left for Surrey. Yep. That’s what it was.
And that is probably why I didn’t hear anything back from the teacher about how the trip went — though I must say after all of those months of Luke misbehaving in class, I tended to try and just sneak out of the school without asking how he did. Anyway, the picture I saw on the cd tonight proved my fears. Luke. Heavy ball. Supposed to be rolled. So you know Luke had to do something like this:
Today Luke graduated from preschool. Well, he still has another year of preschool before kindergarten, but I guess they just like to celebrate the year. And Luke making it through preschool is absolutely a reason to celebrate. When I picked him up the first day of school and asked how he did, the teacher looked at me and said, “Not good.” And there began a good couple months of poor behaviour from Luke. There were a lot of rules that Luke was not used to. I mean, how was he supposed to know he shouldn’t slam his hand down into the communal fruit dip at snack time? That’s never come up at our house.
I don’t know how many times I left the preschool in tears because Luke just wasn’t getting it. He’s so big and so exuberant and he’d end up pushing the smallest girl in the school who, of course, had glasses that were this close to breaking. If you behaved all day at the school, you got a sticker, and five stickers meant you got to pick a toy out of the box. It took him a long time to get five stickers. But after a while he caught on. He started listening. And the big improvement came after he had his tonsil and ear surgery. Probably a lot of it was just not being able to hear — that’d make listening pretty hard, I’d say.
He’s come so far this year. Sure he still has too much energy for me, but he is listening so much better and that makes everything we do so much more fun. He has so much more personality and interests and I can tell that he’s going to be a good kid as he grows. And a big kid, too. (He now officially weighs more than Madeline!) And this video proves that he has his mother’s natural rhythm and cynicism. (Now if we could just teach him to say his “V”s — and his teacher to pronounce our last name correctly!)
I love you Luke. I’m very proud of you today.
(Oh, and not that you’ll miss him, but he’s that big tall blonde kid in the back row with the navy “28″ jacket on. That’s as far as I could zoom with that camera.)
