It's Memorial Day Weekend and let's just say that after Friday's Adventure with Emily, it's been, um.... Interesting. Challenging. And, a hoot.
By the way, Friday night was a Warren Barfield concert sponsored by our church and store. We were all 3 supposed to be there, but Em and I bailed out after her day on Friday. Here's what we missed:
And, these are our friends Jessica and Keith Howard. Keith is the new worship leader at our church. Come on. Click on this picture and then try to tell me you don't want to come to our church and meet this guy... well, AND worship God with him.
On Saturday, we really had a laid back day. I wanted Em to try to sleep as late as she could and then spend the rest of the day as low-key as possible. She still had a dry, persistent cough which made me think it couldn't be a cold, but what else could it be? We spent the bulk of the day inside watching her favorite episodes of
Gina D's Kid's Club,
The Wiggles,
Charlie and Lola, and other such highly educational jibberish... because I would never use my Chloroformic TV to sedate my daughter so she doesn't run all over the house and cough up a lung! That would just be messy!
Later in the evening, we busted out of the house and took Em for a haircut (her 2nd in 3 years and has never had more than 1/2 inch taken each time), supper and shopping with the intent of finding a swingset (nowadays called a playset) that we didn't need to take another mortgage out on the house for. Have you seen the prices on those things? They can be downright expensive!
The lesson we learned that night? Start shopping for playsets/swingsets in February or the one you really want will be out of stock in a 5-county area. We kept coming back to the same set over the 3 or so weeks we've been looking and when we checked on it, it's no longer available -- ANYWHERE. We found another set at Toys'R'Us that we liked (and could afford) and while they were out of stock, they were at least offering rainchecks for them... but get this... the raincheck would simply lock in the sale price. The service desk had no idea if they would be getting them in stock again and if, when. We bailed and opted to go home and do some more research online. (We eventually scored through Wal-Mart's online store and shipping wasn't as expensive as we expected.)
The evening was a bit rough on Emily. She was clearly tired on the way home and we thought she'd zonk out before we made it home. Nope. She ended up going to bed a little before 8pm but tossed, turned, cried, pouted, wailed, etc. until well after 9:30. Not sure what the issue was, but she slept pretty well once she fell asleep.
Sunday was a rough one on me (mom). Emily and I were butting heads from about the minute she got up until late in the afternoon. Let me just tell ya this, folks. That, my friends, is exhausting. I won't go into all the details, but I was certainly ready for a nap after we got done with church and got back from lunch.
This morning, Em slept about an hour past her normal 6am wake-up. She was pleasant. I was pleasant. And, we worked on puzzles in her room for a while together before daddy-o came downstairs. She still has her cough and this morning it was accompanied by a runny nose. It's now confirmed by Dr. Mom that this is likely a strange cold and not an allergy of some sort.
I should be carrying my phone around with me more often now that Emily's chattering is going a mile-a-minute. She's been saying the funniest things and cracks me up every single day -- too many times to count.
This morning we were eating breakfast and she informed me she needed to poop. (Gross. I know... but when you're potty training, topics like these come up all the time and at the most inappropriate times.) I started to get up from the table to go help her and in a very calm, matter-of-fact manner, she held up a hand in the "Stop! In the name of love..." position and informed me, "No. Mommy, right right. Self." (Add in the hand motions, tone of voice and facial expressions and I was just told: "No, Mommy. Don't trouble yourself. You stay right here at the table, I've got this one covered by myself... I'll call you if I need help.")
And, what did my little girl do but march herself to the bathroom, drop her drawers, download and then come back out and proudly proclaim her new achievement. She was sooo darn proud of her accomplishment that she kept telling us about it over and over. Ahhhhh. My baby's growing up. She earned herself 5 stickers for her potty chart this morning instead of the typical 1 she gets each time she goes potty for me.
I started this post this morning. We had some ideas, but really wasn't sure what we were going to end up doing today. We found out last night that Ryan had just bought his first car and we thought it would be fun to head down to see it. I know nothing about cars, but his is pretty nice. It has the required 4 wheels, seats, a steering wheel, oh, and brakes, and he assures me there are no holes under the floormats for Fred Flintstone's fancy footwork. Seriously though, it's a very pretty car (kind of a dark teal green) and I think he said it's a '94 Mitsubishi 3000GT (I think????). Anyway, it seems to be the kind of car every teenage boy would want to have. I can just picture he and Dyl trolling around town now.
Here's Ryan and his new car. And for a bonus... click on the picture to enlarge it and take a gander at how I'll look in 20 years when I'm yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Sheesh, I have no idea what that look is all about. I hope I don't look that way often!
And, to keep our faithful followers happy, here's what Emily (in red) was doing while we were gawking at Ryan's new car. Madilyn (Ryan's sister, on the right) came over for a quick hello and before we knew it, Emily was hanging out with her friends and playing in the yard. I'm so glad she makes friends easily and isn't painfully shy.
And get this kids... Em fell asleep on the way home from Columbus this afternoon. That was shortly before 3pm. At around 4ish we carried her into the house and laid her down and she slept until shortly before 8pm. That's a 4 hour nap, folks! Yeah. I can't wait to see what happens at bedtime tonight. (But man, does she act like she's feeling better!) I think we'll delay bedtime a bit.
Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend and remembered why we get the day off! It's more than just cookouts and shopping! We take so much for granted.
Be Blessed!
-j
To some kids this might be anti-climatic... not for Emily! Just the picture alone would have sufficed! She jumped up and down and squealed with delight. It wasn't until I put it in the CD player and played a few of her favorite songs that she realized what it was. She was pumped. And at about that time... Daddy came home from his meeting and got to enjoy the fun before Miss E had to scoot off to bed.
