Just Heather

We have a daily ritual—the after-school snack. Dinner is not until 7, and my kids are on full feed, so no way am I stupid enough to expect them to last 7 hours between meals. Lately, the “snack” has taken on a life of its own. Yesterday, she fixed cinnamon toast. Not just one piece as you might expect for a snack, but a plate more full than she would eat for breakfast.

Today, she’s having leftover chicken dumplings. Her choice after I vetoed the chili. The little one isn’t much better. I asked her what she wanted for snack and she said “peanut butter.”

“You want a peanut butter sandwich. For snack. Really?”

“No. I jess want peanut butter.”

My family is so weird.

There is currently a fire rescue vehicle parked across the street—with the engine still running, I might add—so that the driver could let his dog out to pee.

Stacia just got on the bus for her first day of school. Ah, the first day of school—new clothes, new backpack, new lunchbox, more school supplies than half the school should need. I, of course, took lots of pictures.

I missed out on getting a picture of her climbing onto the bus this morning. We had a little accident on the sidewalk right about then. A little (hurt-free) antiseptic and an Elmo bandage, and all she could think about was the sucker she had tucked into her backpack. Yes, the little one got one too. She carries toys and diapers around in it everywhere we go.

The girls and I had a fun project this year, instead of buying expensive backpacks. They decorated cheap, solid color backpacks with appliques and ribbons. I’m not so sure how well it’s going to last. A few things already fell off of Stacia’s overstuffed backpack. Luckily, she didn’t seem too upset about it. I promised to help her fix it tonight. Maybe I need to dig out the sewing kit and pretend I know what I’m doing to reinforce the fabric glue we used.

Stacia feigned apprehension last night before bed and again this morning, but she took off for the bus before I could blink. Of course, I was busy trying to catch a two-year-old before she hit the concrete, but I still think she was in a pretty big hurry. When she returns, I’ll get barely a “fine” when I ask about her day. However, by dinner I’ll have heard everything about the day minute by minute.

Remember how excited I was that school was almost starting? Yeah, why didn’t someone remind me of the 50 million things to do, places to be, and meetings to attend. I completely blocked out a rather significant fact about the school year—we have about eleven hundred accompanying activities.

School starts in 2 days. I had my first meeting last night, the one for Girl Scout leaders. It brought everything back in stunning clarity. Free time? Right—the white spaces on my calendar are rapidly disappearing as activity schedules roll in.

  • Kids’ Church Choir—twice a month
  • Brownies—twice a month (being the leader did give me the opportunity to arrange the schedule so these two alternate)
  • Soccer—twice a week
  • PTO Meetings—once a month
  • PTO committees—I begged off this year (maternity leave?)
  • Brownie Leader Meetings—once a month
  • Bible Study—once a week (this one’s for me!)
  • Baby Doctor appointments—every two weeks for now; moves to weekly the last month (that doesn’t even account for the inevitable trips to the pediatrician now that everyone else’s germs will come home with my kid)

That works out to about 5 things each week. How ever did I manage to forget about that? For the foreseeable future my meeting notebook will be permanently grafted to my arm, my chauffer’s cap shall not be removed, and my bottom will be firmly planted in the doctor’s office waiting room. What idiot coined the term stay-at-home mom?

Conversation with my daughter on the phone last night:

Me: Hi, baby. How are you?
Brenia: I’m at Nama’s.
Me: I know you’re at Nama’s. Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Okay, baby. I’ll talk to Stacia. I love you!
Brenia: Bye!

I had my glucose test yesterday. I got to drink the orange goo. It may look like orange soda, but it tastes nothing like Sunkist. And everyone knows that’s the only orange soda worth drinking. Anything else is just vile.

With my first pregnancy I got addicted to Sunkist. I had to cut down on caffeine and there’s very little in orange soda. This time around I completely lost my taste for it. Instead, I started craving Mountain Dew. Luckily, I am allowed to have a bit. I have to keep it limited, but the only real side effect during pregnancy is low birth weight. I don’t think that will be too much of a problem, considering the 9 and 10 pound kids I tend to pop out.

Though baby’s size is down slightly. She’s only measuring 2 days ahead now, as opposed to 9. My doctor wants to do another ultrasound at 36 weeks so we can see just how early I can go. We are officially down to a double digit countdown!

The girls’ week at Camp Grandma’s is almost over. It should feel weird here, I guess, but I’m so busy doing the things I never have time for that I barely notice the quiet. I’ve gotten our bedroom fairly organized in preparation for the office transition. We have no spare bedrooms so baby is taking over the office. He’ll just have to deal with a corner of our bedroom. Of course, that means I can no longer just shut the door on his noise. It’s bad enough I can feel the bass vibrate my bathtub each night when he plays City of Heroes—now I won’t even have an insulated wall between us.

I also finished most of my baby shopping. The only thing left to buy is a crib mattress—seeing as how the old one is still being used on a toddler bed—and the bedding. After that it’s just clothes and diapers. For the rest of my natural life. Speaking of clothes, I also got most of Stacia’s school clothes bought. I discovered all of her skorts and shorts from the spring were still in great shape. Shirts she ruins with gusto, but the shorts seem to have survived. I took them to a few stores and bought some matching tops. I hate this time of year. She needs new school clothes because she destroyed all of last year’s, but I hate spending a lot of money. Because I’m cheap. And because she’ll just need all new clothes again when it cools.

School starts in one week, so it’s good I’m almost ready. Well, I’ve been ready for weeks, but now I almost have her ready too. Tonight I have to go to the Back to School Night. I promised I would go check the class list and see who she knew, since she couldn’t go herself. When I made the offer, I was thinking I’d just pop in and jot down the names I recognized. It occurred to me this morning that this could take a lot longer than I thought. I’m bound to run into everyone I haven’t seen all summer and spend a few minutes catching up with each of them. Such is life in a small town.

That’s all the time I have for catching up here. I’m sure I’ll be posting with more regularity once we get back to a daily schedule.

I haven’t updated in awhile, partly due to the blog upgrades, but mostly because it’s SSDD around here. If you want to know what I’ve been going through, read a list of “possible” pregnancy symptoms/side-effects. Check all of the above. I’m all over every, single disgusting, annoying pregnancy-related issue—most of which you don’t want to hear about, even if you did purposefully visit a pregnancy blog.

I always feel so guilty about how much I hate pregnancy, knowing as I do how many women would give anything to be in my shoes. I attempt to relish the moment, but I mostly find myself counting down the days. I couldn’t tell you what month I’m in, but I can tell you I have 15 weeks to go! Less, really, since at last measurement little Lorelai was looking about 9 days ahead of schedule. My doctor has promised to induce early and I’m going to hold her to it.