Worth it

The furniture protection thingie that cost $100?

Worth. Every. Penny.

hmpf

Well, I was trying to desperately find my camera to take a pic of Madi holding the bottle but I couldn't find it fast enough. SIGH. I can't believe she's 8 months old now and finally looking it. I was worried that I was going to have a pint sized kid FOREVAH! I weighed her the other day and she's 17.3 pounds. Give or take. :) So I think she's well on her way to being 20 pounds by a year. She also only woke up once at 4:45 and fell right back asleep. So whew It will be nice to eventually sleep through the night but I'll take the little interruptions over the big ones.

I still want to take the girls to playgroup today but Lily has a cough. I think it's a post nasaly thing but I don't really want to take the chance. It sucks because Lily is so excited about it. :( She's not coughing a lot.... And yes that's the new sofa. It felt so amazing to sit on a sofa that actually supports my butt!

I guess we'll go to playgroup. I don't want to hear Lily whining for the next 3 hours. :P

Lily-isms

Lily: "This is my special scone!"
Me: "Do you mean your special stone?"
Lily: "Yeah!"

Lily: "Daddy you're bad and I'm going to smack your butt!"
Me: "Lily run!"

Lily to me: "You drive me nuts".
Thanks.

Madilyn only woke up once at 3:30 and fell right back asleep so woohoo for me! Today I'm trying to get ready for the new furniture. I'm trying to take advantage of the change to fix up more things than I probably need to. Pedro honestly didn't notice that I painted one of the walls in the living room yesterday. Today I want to get some new vent covers. I think rusty and covered in cat vomit is probably not going to match the new decor.

Whoops

I know I haven't been posting lately. We have a few problems at our house. Madi has started waking up in the middle of the night and keeping me up for hours. At first I thought that I had to get her to fall asleep on her own. Which sounds like an oxymoron but you know what I mean. But what happens is that M never manages to fall back asleep so after an hour and a half or two hours I finally take her to bed with me, where she proceeds to kick and whack me about the face with her fists, but eventually falls asleep. I bought a new sleep book hoping for answers but there are no answers for a baby that screeches in her sleep trying to figure out how to crawl.

So now, I give her 15 minutes and then take her to bed. Although, this morning she still kicked and punched for an hour. It's like the stuff she went through as a baby. Sigh. So I'm very tired and trying to keep up with the house and Lily and Madi... I'm doing okay and I've decided to do the best I can and that means taking M to bed with me so that I get SOME sleep. Well, the both of us. She needs it more than I! Maybe. She doesn't have to drive us anywhere. :)

What else? We're getting some new furniture on Thursday. Nothing too exciting but hey, it's new. I almost feel grown up. :) But in anticipation, I've been trying to clean the walls and the high high ceilings in the livingroom. Good thing my aim is decent. :) And I read one of my baby books that says she can eat more solids so I've upped her game. She had some pork and rice for dinner tonight. She had yogurt and some baby cookies for lunch, which she ADORED. It's nice because as I start to use more juice I use less formula and what a blessing that is on the checkbook!

Anyway, I'll try and write more in the future. When I actually start to get 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night. As it is, it's almost 8:30 and I can hardly keep my eyes open. SIGH

Peace

Well, I heard a big boom and the lights went out this morning but then came back on. I think instead of power line 0, trees 698. We now have power line 1, trees 698. I saw something sparkling across the street and through the trees. Pedro said that I should call but please, what am I going to say? If someone lost power, they'll call quickly enough. I do!

So yesterday, I decided to make things a little more special. I was going to make pancakes and then I remembered that we still had strawberries. So I cut them up, sprinkled them with sugar and let them make their own juice. Then I made pancakes (from scratch, thanks). We had them with the strawberries, maple syrup and powdered sugar. Tah dah!
Lily loved it. But then I remembered that she loved pancakes when she was on the "inside" too. :) Pedro was a little jealous as he was at a class while we were getting our pancakes on. :) I put in more effort because of the winter blahs. We magically kept our power last night. Although, I had a bout of gastritis again and I didn't care if the roof fell in (but that's another story). We might lose our power today because of more snow, very wet ground and high winds. Sigh.

So, SO, tired of winter.

Color me Ready

Well, I got more water and baby food today. If things look ugly tomorrow I'm making Pedro go to Lowe's to buy a generator. If they have any left. I was worried about being bored, but really without power, there's too much work to do.

And therefore, there was time to think. This is what I have learned from the most recent storm:

- Our water heater rocks. I had a hot shower Saturday morning, 8 hours after the power had shut off. Pedro had a luke warm shower Sunday morning.

- Our kitchen floor sucks. There was a leak from the ice cubes melting in the freezer and now our boards are sticking up. boo

- Gas powered grills are amazing. You can cook and heat up your water!

- Washing dishes with cold water is torture. And yes I had to wash because I only have so many baby bottles.

- Hot water is the best thing on earth.

- It's possible to survive power outages during sub-freezing weather you just have to get used to living in the same pants for 3 days.

- Battery powered dvd players are awesome.

- Cell phones are absolute life savers. And sorry about the bill, Pedro. (I found Netflix on my cell phone! But Pedro yelled at me)

- I need curtains or weather proofing stuff around all of my windows. In related news, I'm very glad that I did a lot of caulking last year.

- So, SO glad that I bought my pink rubber boots. I thought the purchase was frivolous at the time but really wanted them. I've worn them every single day for over a week.

That's all I can think of for now but you get the idea. There are some things that Pedro and I know we have to do that we weren't sure of before. It's nice to have clarity. Too bad it came at the expense of a power outage!

Hope everyone keeps safe and is ready for round 2.

Enough already

So yes, we made it through what? Winter storm #3? 4? This one was really bad though. We had a thick layer of sleet over and under a fair amount of snow and that has brought a lot of trees down. I feel lucky that we have our power back already. It went out 12:15am Friday night(Saturday morning?) and came back 11:15 Sunday night. So almost 48 hours. The first day I was kind of excited to have my mettle tested. By Sunday, I was definitely over that. Okay, so I made scrambled eggs Saturday morning in a cast iron pan on the grill Paula Deen style (1/4 stick of butter) and I heated up water to clean with and made soup. Then it got old. Tromping out to the wood pile. Watching the fire all night. Even when it wasn't my turn, it was hard to sleep as the pops would wake me up.

All in all, not a good time. But we made it. The house at its lowest got to 52F, which was warm, apparently. Someone from Pedro's company walked by and said his place was 38F. OUCH I'm glad we all stayed warm and well fed. I guess I feel like, since I know that I can do it, I don't need to do it anymore. I spent hours (HOURS!) shovelling the heavy snow/sleet from one side of the driveway, only to have the pine trees there break and block the way out. I can't even print what I said when I found that out. I took this pic around 7am Sunday morning. Oh and after all the snow fell it went down to 11F overnight. yay

I know, we could've gone to a shelter but the thought of mingling with others and not having stuff handy would've driven me batty. I am grateful that we had a fireplace and a good supply of wood AND that I made sure we had enough food and drink for a few days. Madi, thankfully, took everything in stride but now she's so used to sleeping with a bed full of people she's not so interested in her crib anymore. SIGH I think, out of all of us, she had the best time. She was always around people and entertained by us. Even when we were ready to all kill each other.

I guess it's like I just told Pedro "I know that we can do it and now I never want to do it again". This was the first night. You can see the potty in the lower right hand corner. Lily wasn't so sure about using it in a dark bathroom. Until we got the candle going in there. :)

This was night #2. Everyone's sleeping just a little bit closer. I think that it probably stayed in the 60s in the living room but it was never balmy. It's funny how used to sleeping in your clothes you get. Or something.

AND there's more wintry mix due here Tuesday....

Here goes

Big thank you to Stacy, who got the horse to come up the hill and who heaved Lily up high enough to pet him! I'm sure she's sore today. :)

Il faisait beau...

It was a beautiful day today. The girls and I picked up Stacy and then headed to Barboursville Vineyard. On the way to Stacy's, I couldn't help but admire the blue sky and rolling snow covered hills. I really do live in a beautiful area. :) See what I mean? Blue sky, distant hills, red barns, sleeping grape vines. :) Oh and Stacy and Lily. ha! They went the long way around. I was willing to risk the snowy steps. Which were not that bad.

We were on our way to see horses! I promised Lily that she would get to see some. And that's all she talked about alllllllll the way there. Stacy used her wily charms on the left one (does he count as a pinto?) and got him up to the fence to see Lily. It took the both of us to foist a 3 year old up and over. I don't have the pics of Lily petting the house because I'm not sure how to import pics from Facebook. :)

So how many days exactly does it take couped up with your loved ones before you snap? Pedro is staying home from work tomorrow. I don't think that I can take it. That was one of the main reasons we went to the vineyard, aside from getting Stacy out of the house, I mean, to get me some wine! I think a slight buzz might help me get through snowmageddon without committing some kind of homicidal something. The girls would be fine. It's the other one. That sits there for hours at a time, playing online games.....

In other news, isn't there a definite red tinge to Madilyn's hair now? Side note: I typed "Madkilyn" the first time. I swear, I'm not going to go the Shining on anyone. What was that noise...?

Jeesh

Well, it's been a fun filled last few days. :P Yes, we received a pretty decent amount of snow fall on Saturday. It was also quite cold which has made me realize we need some serious winter gear. I have a feeling it will sit in a box for years at a time, but I really needed some good quality gloves and coats yesterday. Usually when it snows here, the temperature stays around freezing. I think it was 19F on Saturday and Lily and I both froze up pretty quickly.

Then yesterday, as I was thinking about making my second cup of coffee, the power went out. And it was out all D*MN day. I couldn't take it anymore and got us all out the door for some hot dinner. The curry was yummy and by the time we got home, the power was back on. Of course today, I have piles of laundry and dishes to do. booo Oh and Pedro would like it if I could pretty please clear out the other side of the driveway. Let me think back to whom it was that dug us out the last time.... Oh wait! It was me! *grumble*

To make my life even more fun, the internet was off this morning. Oh, obviously it's back on now but some sort of implosion was imminent in my head. I know that my ancestors had to actually either grow their own food, or hunt it down and kill it so I'm slightly ashamed that one day stuck at home, one day without power and a half a day without the internet, almost brought me to my knees. I'm ever so grateful for my cell phone! And yes, Lily is standing up in the picture and the snow is to the bottom of her coat. We got a good amount of snow. I swear that just a mile or two away from us, they only got a few inches. Lucky, lucky me.


Why am I so grouchy today? Let me see. M woke me up at 1:30 this morning after refusing a bottle at 11:30pm. I got her another bottle but she kept me up until 3:30am. So I finally just brought her to bed with me and she proceeded to wake me up intermittently until 5:30am. Then Pedro decided to pound on the door at 7:30 for help outside. I think me slamming the door shut and going back to bed let him know how much help he was going to get out of me. I did manage to sleep from 7:30 til 8:30 when Lily woke me up with a discreet knock. And it really was discreet. I wasn't being sarcastic. :) Perhaps she was afraid to awaken the beast within. :)