The Sanctity of Tuesday

You know the opening scene in 'The Emperor's New Groove', where the old man gets in the way of the song and dance number and Emperor Kuzco throws a hissy because his 'groove' was thrown off?

That was me last week. Except I wasn't yelling at a little old man, but at the government.* You see, doing nothing on Tuesdays is totally a thing around here. Going to vote is definitely a thing. A thing that totally threw me off my groove. Voting is something that involves me not wearing my PJs and dragging Doug with me and standing in a looooong line. All things I hate doing (except the being with Doug part). I did try to vote early, but believe it or not, the line was worse. At any rate, I was able to drop Doug off at my parents' house and then go vote. Missions exasperatedly accomplished.

I take Tuesdays off, they are my crash days. I take this very seriously. Well, as seriously as you can take something when you sit around in your PJs for most of the day. Let me explain the origin of the 'Crash Day'. Having a few chronic illnesses makes me a tired person. Most people who know me well, will hear my say "I'm tired" about 673 times a day. Doug even knows this. He'll look at me and say, "Mommy's tired."** At any rate, when the fatigue starts to build up, the pain will too. Such that when I know I've over done it, my muscles will begin to twitch as sort of an early warning system (which is occasionally too late to do anything about it). I have found through experience that if I ignore these sign and keep on going about my business during the week, I crash unexpectedly. By setting aside one day a week in which I don't need to leave the house, let alone get dressed, I save a lot of energy and restore myself. Its kind of like when firefighters are fighting a forest fire and they set their own fires to prevent the blaze from spreading. By intentionally taking it easy once a week, I prevent most other fatigue crashes. It's brilliant.

Monday was  my day to crash for a while. We're usually busy on weekends, running errands, fun outings and going to church. Mondays I was tired, so it was a natural day for me to take it easy. Then Doug's story time at the library moved from Wednesday to Monday. I realized I could hold off my crash day for one more day and the Tuesday Crash day was born.

Crash day is a wonderful thing. I do look forward to it every week. On Tuesday morning, I permit myself the luxury of letting Doug watch a DVD, by himself. Doug will wake up, and then I'll change him and dress him and fix him something easy and non-messy for breakfast. He'll usually have dry cereal (for whatever reason, he's not big on milk in his cereal), toast or a cereal bar and some milk. I will then turn on a DVD of his choice, usually Olivia or Thomas, and then go back to my room, leave the door partially open, and then lay down for about an hour. Occasionally Doug decides to be the world's most persistent snooze alarm, and come in about every twenty minutes or so. Sometimes he comes in because he wants something, or he needs a snuggle or he just wants to check in. Either way, I'm totally fine with that. Then I'll get up, Doug and I will hang out, I'll make him some lunch, and then it's nap-time for him and more relax time for me. He'll usually nap until the second shift, Jeff, gets home. I usually have something quick ready for dinner on Tuesdays, or Jeff will make something. It's really amazing what a difference taking it easy once a week can make!




*In my defense, albeit for different reasons, I probably wasn't the only one yelling at the government last week.  

**Over the summer when I had a bad flare up, he looked at me and said that, and then told me to go lay down. How can I argue with that? 

You'll Thank Me When You're Literate

I've been debating for a while about when I should more formally introduce the alphabet to Doug. In my b.c. life (before children) I used to teach children to read.  Additionally, I love to read myself, so literacy is something that is near and dear to me. I put it off for a while to get potty training off the ground (still very much a work in progress). But Doug is now very interested in letters and mostly can sing the ABC song.*

Last week I was inspired by Jeff's cousin's blog. Alli is doing a theme every month and starting the theme with a box with items in that theme. That really sounded like fun and got my creative juices flowing. I decided that I would introduce a letter by putting items that began with that letter in a box, along with a coloring page, courtesy of  Sesame Street printables and a large foam letter (left over from our large alphabet mat. What a pain in the butt that was).

I have various other actives and crafts planned to go along with this. After we looked in the 'A' box this morning, there was a letter 'A' hunt. I had printed out twelve large and differently colored 'A's and stuck them around the basement for Doug to hunt for. When he came down the stairs and saw the first one, he proclaimed, "That's letter A!" (thanks you, Sesame Street). I thought each day we'd do a 15-20 minute activity involving the letter and spend a week or two on each letter. He's grasped 'A' rather quickly, so I think we may only spend one week on it. In addition to learning the symbol (I'm only showing him the capital letter right now) we're also learning the short vowel sound for the vowels. If he only comes out of this with a knowledge of the letter names, however, I'll be happy. I mean, he's only two and a half. So far so good with the short 'A' sound though. I've also decided to use Sesame Street videos about various letter skits (today it's 'A's Anatomy'). It's actually letter 'A' week on their website!

Here's some pics of learning in action:

I decided, just for the first time, I'd gift wrap the box (I'm awful at wrapping. If you get something from us that's nicely wrapped, Jeff did it.). Initially, I thought Doug would be mighty pissed off unwrapping a box of his own toys, but he was quite excited.

 And yes, we're still totally in our pjs. It's a rainy Tuesday morning.

Here Doug is examining the contents of his 'A' box.

Doug has found his first letter 'A' on his 'A' hunt! He totally loved this activity. 

So far so good :)



*As an educator, one of my biggest pet peeves is when an adult proclaims a child "knows their ABCs", when what they actually know is the song, not the sound to symbol relationship, which is far, far more important.  End of rant.

Reset

The summer has just flown by! I have to say, I'm glad it's done and almost fall. Summer is always a bit tough, I seem to be more prone to fibro flare ups, and indeed I had a nasty one in July. Just as I got over that, my thyroid decided to join in the fun too! I was worried about our trip, but my doctor was able to diagnose my low thyroid just in time! We went out to Kansas City for the last week of the summer. It was nice to visit with my in-laws and Doug always loves seeing them. I feel that we were really able to get potty training well under way while we were there, with four adults watching Doug, he was taken to the bathroom quite a bit. But we got to relax and more importantly get out of the rut that my illness had set us into. It was very cleansing. I think I'm back on track and I'm totally ready to enjoy my favorite season of the year: Fall!

Until next time, here are some pictures of our Kansas City fun!


This first set of pictures are from Lego Land. Doug asked to go back there just about every day.

In this picture he's helping his Pop-pop make a house out of tissue box sized rubber Legos.


There were small wading pool sized tubs of Legos and Duplos everywhere! They had some farm animals that Doug absolutely loved. However, they didn't have them for sale in the store!


They also had some cute Duplo cupcakes. They only came in pink however, Doug loved them regardless.



After going to Lego Land, my brother-in-law recommend this place for lunch, I think it was called 'Fritz's'. You meal was delivered via train and a basket. Both Doug and Uncle Matt were very excited about this!

Here's a shot of Doug looking at the trolley that went by our table.


Here comes our food on the train!



Doug's great grandmother, Nan, came over from St. Louis to visit with us for a few days. On one nice day, we went fishing. After about 15 minutes, Doug caught a fish. And then he was done.


Unfortunately, this cool park was right by the water, and after he caught his fish, Doug wanted to go slide and play.



The last two days we were there, the remnants of hurricane Isaac caught up to us. There was lots and lots of rain to play in!



The second rainy day we headed up to the mall to wear Doug out before we got him in the car the next day. The mall has this fairly unique two level carrousel.


We all had a good deal of bbq and fun in Kansas City!

It's Friday!

It's finally Friday! I don't know what it's like else where, but here in the D.C. metro, it's been raining on and off all day. I was alerted to the rain a little before 8 this morning. Doug came into my room and announced, "It's RAINING Mommy!!!". It was a little more excitement that I can deal with at that hour of the morning, but I didn't want to rain on his parade, as it was.

It has been a loooong two weeks. A little over two weeks ago, I rolled my foot/ankle coming down our deck steps while carrying a chair. That minor injury sent my fibro into a tailspin and I've been stuck in a lovely little fibro flare up since then. Today is the first day in a while that I was able to promptly get out of bed in the morning. Due to that and the rain, I decided that Doug and I shall bake!

The most serious mind, baking takes. Also country music.

We got off to a bit of a dangerous start. I had left the chocolate morsels on the counter and pushed Doug's chair up to it. I turned my back for a fraction of a second, only to turn around to catch him using the paring knife to open the bag of chocolate! I freaked out a bit checking his hand for cuts, which upset him. I usually let him sample some of the chocolates, but because he was upset I let him sample more than was practical for making chocolate chip cookies. I ended up opening a bag of peanut butter chips and making chocolate and peanut butter cookies instead. They turned out to be quite delicious! I attempted to get a picture of Doug eating the cookies, but no dice. But believe me he's enjoying them while watching Cars.

It's the perfect day to cuddle up on the couch with some cookies and a movie! Happy Friday!

Summer Time!

This summer kind of feels like a manual car being driven by some one who has no idea how to drive stick (like me). It goes on quite well for a while, and then stalls out. We started out the summer with a cold that Doug brought us and that took me forever to get over. Then we had a fantastic time at the wedding of one of Jeff's frat brothers in North Carolina. Then we got slammed by the Great Land Hurricane of '12 and lost power for nearly 6 days. We've been playing around with my fibro medication as well, which has given me mixed results. We're very excited about going out to Kansas City at the end of the summer.

Due to a lack of energy and a lot of time to make up for, here's a ton of pictures of our summer so far, one picture being worth a thousand words and what not.

This is a picture of the sign that hung in every stall in the bathroom of the wedding reception we went to. The reception was on a lovely pier that is evidently trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible. For example, the toilets used 'reclaimed' water, so they thought this sign was necessary:

So you know, stay out of the toilet because of the reclaimed water, not because it's a toilet. Funny side note, you couldn't go into the bathroom without hearing people snapping pictures of this sign.


This is a picture of Jeff and me at the reception. We had a great time, it was our first trip away without Doug (just two nights). Initially I was a little apprehensive about going to the wedding of one of the frat brothers, but due to the heavy presence of the wives, all the guys were on their best behavior and I didn't see anymore of them then most people (no odd nudity).




Here's some random pictures of backyard fun:

Catching lightning bugs!

Hanging out in our inflatable pool.

In June we were supposed to go to the baptism of my friend's son. I lost the invitation and we wound up at the wrong church and completely missed the event. The reception was to be held at a park, and the whole time Doug kept asking from the backseat "Park? Park?". We finally decided to head home, get changed and head out to Wheaton Park. Why not make some lemonade? Doug had a blast but kept on asking about seeing his friend Nora (the big sister of the baptized). I had to keep telling him that mommy was the flake and not Nora. Doug managed to have a pretty good time anyway.

The train ride is very serious business!

The 4th of July turned out to be another one of those happy accidents. We'd left my Uncle's house early because Doug was getting cranky and we knew he wouldn't sleep there. We drove my Grandma back to her place and Doug slept the whole time. He got about an hour and a half worth of sleep in the car. When we pulled into our drive way I realized that the city's fireworks were about to start in 40 minutes. We hurried up, ran into the house and re-provisioned and headed out to find a spot to watch the fireworks. We ended up in a parking lot across the lake, the perfect distance to see the fireworks without them being too loud. We were also at an easy exit to go home without fighting too much traffic. If we had planned it we couldn't have done a better job!


Doug was enthralled with the fireworks. He can be iffy about loud noises, so we were prepared to leave if we needed to. He only cried when they were over, he wanted more!

The weekend before last was supposed to be gorgeous, no rain and in the low 80's.We took Doug on his first trip downtown and on his first Metro trip. Of course it misted on us all day, but I'll take that over 100 degrees.

Our first stop was the American History Museum, the transportation section. Here Doug is rather excitedly pointing to a truck.



We also saw the dinosaurs at Natural History. Here is one very tired little boy passed out on the Metro ride home:



Til next time!

Mini Vacation

I didn't actually go away over the weekend, but I still feel like I had a small vacation.

Friday morning my mother came over to get Doug and whisked him away for a day with my parents. Soon after that I set out for Tyson's Corner Virginia. I didn't even mind the drive out there, it was peaceful to sit in the car and listen to my own music without some one occasionally screaming for 'Rainbow Connection' to be played again (and again, and again..). Once at Tyson's I met my friend Bridget at her hotel. She actually was having a very well deserved vacation. From there we went to Leesburg where there's an outlet mall. The big draw for us there, well at least me, was the Vera Bradley outlet, which was absolutely amazing! Walking into the store was almost visually overwhelming for me, so much to see in so many patterns and colors! We walked around for a while looking at the various styles and patterns offered. The deals were fairly good. They also had a deal that day that gave you half off a second item, which I thought was decent. I was kicking myself for not having waited to replace my baby bag*, but I do love the newer pattern that I got it in. Initially I picked up a large duffel bag, but after walking around with it, I remembered that we had actually bought a nice duffel bag before I went to the hospital to have Doug, so there really was no need for another one. I did want a really big bag though and settled on the 'Get Carried Away Tote' in English Meadow, one of my favorite patterns. I decided that the bag would be good for day trips and car trips. Jeff looked at me like I had three heads that evening, but that's why I went with Bridget and not Jeff. I also picked up a new address book** in the same pattern. I used great self control and only bought two things there, keeping my total at about eighty bucks. I'm very proud of myself.

Of course there were many other stores there. They had several children's clothing stores, so I bought clothes for the one person in my family who absolutely didn't need any***. I got Doug another helicopter shirt so that I don't have to constantly tell him that the only shirt he wants to wear is in the laundry. I also got him some more pjs, one of them a 3 piece set so he can have long pants to wear in the fall/winter and a cute Elmo short set which he wants to wear constantly. I also got him a cute snap button down collared shirt to wear from Old Navy. We were just about to leave when I noticed a Corningware and Pyrex store. I only bought two things, again showing great restraint. I got a cute lunch box sized dish with a nice top that will vent for microwaving and a larger oval oven safe dish with the same sort of lid. I may have bought them purely because of the hot pink and purple lids. Bridget fretted that Jeff would never let me go shopping with her again.

The next day Bridget and I went up to Gaithersburg to a book festival to see the Bloggess, Jenny Lawson. It was an outdoor event, just borderline on waaay too hot. Jeff drove us because it looked like parking was going to be nutty, and it was. He and Doug went to a lovely park near by and then to see trains, so the two of them had a nice time. The tent (or 'room' as the website misleadingly called it) that Jenny Lawson presented in was swarmed by women before her presentation. As soon as the previous speaker left the stage there was quite a hustle for seats. I know we were very lucky to get seats at all! I think Jenny Lawson may have been one of the bigger draws that day, because she was in one of the bigger tents. She walked right by us, escorted by several cops, to get to the stage. She read from her book 'Let's Pretend This Never Happened', which is hysterical. She was very witty and genuinely nice. After the reading she went to another tent to do signings. As I had read the book on my nook, I went and bought a hard back copy for her to sign. The line went on forever, but Bridget and I met several funny women waiting in it. The whole thing was a total estrogen fest. After that, Jeff and Doug picked us up and we went out for a yummy BBQ dinner. Doug requests nothing else these days.

Sunday ended up being more laid back than I had envisioned. We took Doug to Sunday school for the very first time. He loved it so much he didn't want to leave and we heard about what he did all day long. One of the older boys in his class went out of his way to befriend Doug. It always amazes me how inclusive young children are with each other. After church the plan was a nap for Doug and then I'd plan and write up a grocery list and go shopping while Jeff stayed home and did the laundry. We ended up laying down too for a short bit and then abandoned the others chores we had in favor of going out for Thai and then to Barnes & Noble. It ended up being a nice way to end a very lovely weekend.


*I've love, love, loved my Baby Bag, but I really wanted a bag with a shoulder strap, so I bought the Metropolitan, which is a great mommy bag. The only draw back is that I lost the pockets on the side for juice cups, but that's a small loss compared to getting a shoulder strap, which has already proved its worth.

** I didn't listen to my mother and used ink to write addresses in my previous one, and once people moved and divorced and split up, it was hard to change things, and white out of any kind didn't work well. I had to type the part about my mother being right in a smaller font.

***Although, my mother did remind me that I should buy more t-shirts for Doug in the next size up for next winter. He doesn't like long sleeved shirts at all, and I had a hell of a time finding short sleeves in January. Again with my mom being right. What is that about?

Drowning Worms

Doug went fishing for the first time this past weekend with his Pop-pop, Uncle John and Jeff. We went to a lake that was pretty close to home. It turned out to be a decent day, warm, but overcast.

Doug didn't have his line in for more than a few minutes before he caught his first fish!

It was a small bluegill. His Uncle John took the fish off the hook for Doug. Doug's biggest concern was that the fish get back in the water quickly. He then went on to catch two more fish soon after. His technique was simple: have Daddy cast out the line, and then slowly reel it in himself, and then have Mommy or Daddy help reel the fish in.

After he caught his third fish, he got a little restless. He began to leave his Star Wars fishing pole on the ground and wander away from it. Luckily, a large fish wasn't interested in his line. Doug and I then spent some time at the playground near by.


After a little play break, Doug was ready to get back down to business. He saw several small catfish that John caught. Doug seemed to enjoy fishing and is eager to go back out and try it some more!