Creating bad habits

Over the last couple of months, my husband and I have gotten into a really bad habit: we've been staying up late every night after the kids go to bed, working! Last night we were up until past 4am and the previous night, I was up until 3am.

My problem is that once the kids go to bed, we'll come down and sit down on the couch to decompress and watch a 30-minute program before going downstairs to start our "homework" for the evening. Inevitably, though, we'll both end up falling asleep for an hour or more and after I've slept that long, I'm wide awake. So, why not get in some time working? I work for an engineering consulting company, so I get paid for my time, no matter where I work it. It's a win-win situation, right?

I wish. I'm just worn out. It's great that the oil and gas industry is so busy and we have all this work now, but it's really bringing back too many memories of college. Everyone else talks about college as this really fun and great time in their lives. I, however, have absolutely no desire to re-live that time of my life. Homework until 2am every night, projects due all the time, studying all night for every test, and sorority obligations on top of all of that. Uhg. There's a reason that our school's alumni refer to "getting out" and not "graduating" from college.

The kids are actually both napping at the moment and I desperately tried to take a nap, too. But, for some reason, I was unable to really go to sleep. Our son has the hardest time turning his brain off and going to sleep for naps and at night time. I'm pretty sure he gets that from me. The next time I'm totally exasperated at him for not taking a nap and later turning into an out of control little psycho-boy, I'm going to have to remind myself that it's all my fault. In the meantime, I'm going to go try to make another feeble attempt at getting a little rest before the kids wake up...

I'm OK...

Lately, the kids have taken to saying, "I'm OK!" quite a bit.

That's because they seem to have suddenly become very clumsy and accident-prone. Every time they trip and fall, almost immediately, they'll say, "I'm OK!" It's fairly amusing, actually.

A couple of their other favorite sayings are, "Sorry about that." And "...but that's allright."

So, I've been sitting here surfin' the 'net, trying to find some kind of inspiration for a Christmas gift for the girl (every time we ask her what she wants Santa to bring her, she says, "I don't know." - and it's true. She seems to have nothing that she actually wants.)

Anyway, the girl has been bouncing on the couch and I just heard a THUNK! Followed closely by:
"I'm OK! Sorry about that! But that's allright!"

These kids - they never cease to crack me up. :)

First time in how long?

Tonight is the first time since Thanksgiving... no... since before Thanksgiving that I have NOT brought any work home with me!

The simulation is done, the datasheets are finished (well, except for the pumps, which someone else is doing), the drawing reviews are finished, and I'm looking forward to going to bed before 1am tonight for the first time in a while, too. What a relief!!!

Now then. We just need to finish getting ready for Christmas, check in with my dad, who had gall bladder surgery yesterday, and check in with one of my dear friends whose Opi passed away on Sunday. Funny how life goes on in the real world.

I'd better get back to that real world thing now. I'll try to get back to the blogging world soon, too. :)

Thanksgiving Update

What a great Thanksgiving we had!

We traveled to Nebraska to celebrate Thanksgiving with grandma, grandpa, and Uncle Scott. And during our visit, we also exchanged our Christmas presents. While this causes me to have to get some serious Christmas shopping out of the way before Thanksgiving, which is pretty difficult for my non-organized-self, it also causes me to get some serious Christmas shopping out of the way before Thanksgiving, which is really pretty nice. (I'm not nearly as good as my friend Courtney!) Now we only have to worry about the husband's side of the family...

Anyway, getting back to Thanksgiving, we headed up to Nebraska on Tuesday afternoon. I really don't think I saw the kids until we were ready to leave on Sunday!

You know, every weekend, the kids wake us by greeting us face-to-face and telling us, "IT'S SUNNY OUTSIDE!!" I half-way expected the same treatment while we were in Nebraska, but I should have known better. From the moment they woke up until the time they went to bed, the kids were all about grandma, grandpa, and Uncle Scott. It was quite nice for everyone, I think. :)

We managed to work in 3 meals from Runza during our time there but I'd have to say the highlight of the vacation came, of course, on Thanksgiving Day. My mom cooked the best meal - turkey, casseroles, mashed potatoes, more casseroles, Watergate salad, fruit salad, rolls... YUM!! And she did it with no help from anyone else. I kept thinking I was going to get into the kitchen and try to help her out, but somehow, something kept on coming up. Finally, after working the previous night and all morning on this wonderful meal, my mom had had enough. She exasperatedly exclaimed, "I'm trying to get everything ready all by myself! Would someone please come help me?!"

And with perfect timing, the girl strolled into the kitchen and said, "Grandma, are you freakin' out?"

Aren't kids wonderful? :)

We're boycotting...

Last week when the time changed, my husband and I decided to boycott the change.

It's actually easy for me. My job has the ever-so-slight "flex time" setup so that you can get to work anytime between 6am and 7am. Then, you put in your 10 hours for the day (plus a 45 minute lunch) and you can leave anytime between 4:45pm and 5:45pm.

I am totally not a morning person, so even though I only live about 10 minutes away from work, I still was unable to get here any earlier than 7am during Daylight Savings Time (DST).

However, about a month ago, my husband struck on a great idea: We could just boycott the time change!

By getting up at the same time of day, I could get to work an entire hour earlier. Brilliant! What was 5:41am during DST (and the time at which my alarm was set) is now 4:41am - an ungodly hour, if you ask me! However, it seems to be working. My body still doesn't know the difference.

The key to this non-time-change is that we now have to put the kids to bed an hour earlier (by the clock) and we have to get ourselves to bed an hour ealier (by the clock). So, instead of hanging out and staying up until 11:00 every night, we now need to be in bed by 10:00 - which is a crazy-early hour of day for me to go to bed... so I've just kept my clock beside the bed on DST! That way, I think I'm still going to bed late when, in fact, I'm going to bed early. Brilliant! :)

This has caused a few difficulties, however. Whenever my husband tells me the time, I have to ask him if that's "our time" or "real time". And it's really strange living in this world where everyone has just spontaneously decided to come to work one hour later. What a bunch of slackers. (hee, hee...)

Rudolph, the moose

Here's a post in the category of "kids say the darndest things"...

Every night before bed, the kids get to each pick out a book or two and we read them before turning off the lights. A couple of nights ago, the boy dug out a book from the inner depths of the bookshelf about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

As he sat down, admiring the front of the book, he said, "And this is a book about the most marvelous moose in the rain forest."

Priceless.

Skinny Girl, Drama Queen

My fingertips are raw and sore - I've been sewing by hand for the last couple of nights. Maybe I should back up...

1st Topic: She's a skinny little thing.
Until Friday last week, we were all still wearing shorts and T-shirts here in Houston. Finally, on Friday an actual cold front came through and forced us to dig out the long pants and figure out that all of the kids' pants are too short for them now. This is not a huge surprise, but what I was somewhat surprised about was the fact that the girl's pants totally fall off of her now. She's no longer wearing a diaper or pull-up during the day (...but she has at least one accident every day), so the only pants that fit her waist are 12-month size and those are about 4 inches too short.

I went out looking for some 2T pants for her and discovered that the standard waist size for 2T pants is about 2 inches too big. So I've been sewing. A tuck here, a tuck there, some ruffles on the bottom of these pants because they almost fit her waist... Uhg.

2nd topic: She's a drama queen.
As if on cue on her 2nd birthday, the girl became an absolute drama queen! And the poor thing - we just watch her and laugh. She definitely doesn't get the desired result from her "tantrum".

Here's a typical tantrum-

The girl: (sobbing with mouth wide open and huge crocodile tears running down her face) I cah fih ma lah!
Us: (with sincere concern) What? What do you need?
The girl: WAAAAHHHHH!
Us: What's wrong? What do you need?
The girl: (still sobbing) I can't find my lambs! WAAAAHHHH!
Us: Lambs? Lamb is right there on the floor. (And we get lamb and give her to the girl.)

Immediately, the crying stops and she starts laughing and jumping up and down because she found lambs. It's really hard to take her seriously. And even when she is serious, nothing could compare to the boy's "intensity" about certain things. So, we end up being a rather apathetic audience for most of her tantrums. Poor little drama queen.

The Cheering Section

One benefit to having a 3.5-year-old is that we now regularly have a cheering section for many things that we do. I guess we didn't read this article soon enough and we've now poisoned the children with the notion that they can't do anything good unless they have reinforcement from us (or something like that, according to the article - oh, what are parents to do?!).

As a result of our telling our children "good job," (especially when they poop or pee on the toilet! - I am not about to stop telling them that just because I don't want to somehow damage their psyche. No, no, I want to positively reinforce that behavior as much as possible...) they will tell us "good job" for doing various things around the house.

"Good job!" I hear when I'm using a screwdriver to put something together. "Good job!" I hear when I'm washing my hands. "Good job!" I hear when I'm putting clothes into the washing machine.

But I'm especially fond of the "Good job!" I hear when I'm using the bathroom. Thank you very much. I'm happy that I have such incredibly impressive toileting skills. :)

The cake

Well, you'll be happy to know that I didn't explode before we were able to give the girl her birthday present on Saturday morning! She was excited about it and has been playing with it ever since Saturday morning (when she's not asking to watch Caillou - uhg!), so I'm happy about that!

And her birthday party went well, too. She was a little overwhelmed by all the activity, but still seemed to have a good time.

In planning the party and the decorations, however, we initially had a hard time trying to figure out what to put on her cake. In the end, though, it was a pretty easy decision.. :)

Still Patriotic

Remember the story about the Flag Shirt? Well, the fascination continues to be a source of many loads of laundry great amusement for us. The girl loves her flag shirt and, in general, American flags. When she runs for President someday, we'll be able to tell everyone she's been training for the post since before she was 2! :)

And in order to give ourselves a break with the laundry load, I made her a couple more flag shirts from some clip art I found online and some iron-on transfer paper. (yep, the inner-Martha has really come out.)

I think they turned out pretty well, and considering the difficulty I had in trying to find any size 2T, plain white T-shirts, I'm darn proud of them: