Ways and Means

A way to go get labor going-
assisting in moving a king bed up some very steep stairs. At midnight. And then,
cleaning under the bed. It was absolutely horrifying under there.  I wanted to take a picture, but I had already started cleaning and half-way clean is not as interesting as all the way filthy.

Just kidding. There was no labor started. But we were up until 2 am almost busting door frames and folding mattresses like sandwiches and reconstructing beds. Because it's always a good idea to begin a home project at 11 pm.

that was the sound of a king mattress. being shoved up the stairs

nesting is fun

7 Quick Takes: Get It Together (again)

1. Two posts in less than 24 hours can you handle it?????? I got a lot crap to do before this kid appears. Top of the list is getting 3 car seats in the back of the Camry. I see lots of sweating and cursing in my near future.

2. 36 weeks. PLUS a hair cut. I am so very thankful for my friend who kept an eye on the kiddos so I could squeeze in what will inevitably be my last solo haircut for awhile. 

what baby?

3. We need to have our house blessed in a bad way. We've lived here for a year and a half and I still have not gotten around to it, but it must be done before the baby. I cannot birth in this house without making sure it's all blessed up.

4. Brad and I found a nice dresser at Goodwill to re-hab for Dominic's clothes, which are still taking up all the space in the changing table. While I'm at it, I think I'm going to paint and get new knobs for the changing table as well. I've got plenty of time (reverse psychology...if I slack and say I still have plenty of time the baby will come early-ish, right?) Then I will post it all on this blog, and link it to Pinterest, and look totally legit.

5. Still haven't ordered the birth kit, and the sheets that have been on my bed for the births of both my other children don't fit on our king bed upgrade. Despite the fact that neither child has been born in a bed, and this one likely won't be either, I feel it is IMPERATIVE that those sheets are ready, but our queen size bed seems to be permanently stuck in the upstairs room of our Cape Cod. It won't fit back down the stairs. It's keeping me up at night.

6. I am excited to bury my placenta this time around since we now own our own home, and I will plant something lovely on top of it in honor of this kid. But then, my buddy sent me this and I am reconsidering. A flower that smells like a corpse and only blooms every 15 years may not be the best for the child in question's self-esteem, but I could charge money for people to come see this bizarre plant, and then pay for college. It could work.

7. I am still debating about whether I am going to go off coffee again....I am running out of time to slowly wean myself from this most wonderful drug/beverage. Surely I will need it when I have three (3!) children. Surely my newborn does not need caffeine coursing through it's little body. Dilemma. Brad agonizes about our 401k, I agonize about coffee consumption. That about sums it up.

Get more Quick Takes here and have a great weekend :) 

THE BEACH

You've waited. You've dreamed about it. You thought the day would never come, but now, it's finally here. The Beach Post. With Pictures.

Let's set the stage, shall we? Say what you will about New Jersey, but Cape May is fantastic. Not a high-rise condo in sight and the whole town is full of Victorian houses bordered by a clean, well-kept promenade that runs along the beach. Pretty much everything you might need is within walking distance. I went an entire week without having to load anyone into their car seats. It was a true vacation.

Naturally, when our family arrived in this peaceful little resort town, we had to shake things up a bit. The first morning of our stay, I was innocently frying some bacon. It got very, very hot and smokey, which then set off the fire alarm in our condo. This is not like when you are in your own house and you can jab the fire alarm and turn it off. This is a public-ish building and the fire alarm is connected to a main alarm, which will awaken everyone else in the building, which then summons the fire department. You see where this is going?

Two fire trucks and an ambulance later, we are standing on the front lawn of our converted Victorian, apologizing to all the other tenants for causing them to evacuate the building at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. As my children cavorted around my feet like puppies on the front lawn, they cheered, 'Yay!!! Fire trucks!!!! They are saving us!!!! We are rescued!! Yay!!!!" I tried to offer the firemen some slightly blackened bacon but they were not amused. I guess because most of Cape May is constructed from very old hardwood (our casa for the week was built in 1870), they take fire very seriously here. The whole place could go up in smoke.

This little incident resulted in my broiling the bacon in the oven each morning (we had brought 7 pounds with us for the week, and there was no way it was going to go to waste.) and my sister dutifully setting up a little fan next to the oven to blow smoke away from the smoke detector. Any beeping noise emanating from the kitchen, whether it be from the microwave or the oven, was enough to send me racing to the smoke detector and waving a towel, begging, "No, no, please...not again..." I'm still trying to recover.

Nonetheless, the beach is a glorious place to bring small children if you do it right. Necessary supplies include some sand toys and a kiddie pool. See, you park the kiddie pool right next to your blanket and make a husband or brother-in-law fill it with sea water.
 Then, the children can do this

And this













While you do this

 There may be some moments of this

you can forage for lunch while digging a(nother) hole in the sand for your toddler

and teach your children about wildlife

But still, you are lounging on a sandy beach, smelling the fresh salt air, the ocean breeze riffling through your hair with the sound of waves crashing and your children laughing, so snuggling seems just right.





I seriously read three books while we were at the beach. It helped that Brad was willing to play Little Brown Bird with Gianna overandoverandover again, and that Dominic was content to shovel sand for hours on end. But I have saved the best for last. Being giantly pregnant at the beach and sporting a maternity swimsuit (Buzz's girlfriend WOOF) may seem unfavorable, but seriously....at the beach you can do this:

 Do you see what I've done here? I am laying. On my stomach. Yes. I dug a hole in the sand to fit the bebe, and I put the beach blanket over top. And then I proceeded to feel very un-pregnant and it was a good, good thing.

We made it through the week without setting anything else on fire, none of the children got sunburned, and Brad and I had a nice date night while my sister and brother-in-law graciously watched our progeny. 

our little slice of real estate...the right half of the verrrrry top floor

Firstly

I promised a beach vacation post extravaganza over a week ago, and am just now getting to it, but first we must begin at the beginning, which would be the getting to portion of the story. According to Google Maps, Cape May, NJ is 11 hours and 37 minutes from the Nati. Plus enough potty stops for one verrrry pregnant lady and 2 young children.

We strategically left at about 1 am to begin the drive, because we hoped that the kiddos would sleep, and mostly they did. The pregnant person had some....difficulties...getting comfy in the front of the Camry but otherwise, 5 hour energy for the husband and some Dave Ramsey podcasts and we were on our way.

The next morning, Brad said he "could do no more" and I took over as pilot. I used to love long car trips when I was in college; blasting the music, flying along the highway, contemplating life's mysteries...good stuff. Edifying for the soul. So when I hopped into the driver's seat to battle the Philly traffic, the sun was shining and city was glittering and I turned up some music to really get a good thing going. Plus, at the end of the yellow brick road was Mecca. The Beach.

sand chairs made out of...sand

Enter children. Did you know that it's really, really difficult to give a rousing self-concert when there are two small people who ask, every.five.seconds, "Mommy? What's that building?" and "Mom? Are we in traffic???" and "Mom?? Can we listen to Laura??" and, most frequently, "Mommy? Where is the beach????"

Ahh, because you see, I (stupidly?) eschew most forms of electronic entertainment for children in the car (read: DVD players and those video game deals disguised as "educational games") but I was ok with the idea of listening to books on CD. So I geared us up with some Little House series, read by Cherri Jones and on loan from the Public Library of Cincinnati. Only problem is that we don't actually have a CD player in our vehicle.

What we do have is one of those awesome cassette tapes with a cord coming out the back, the one you could plug your Discman into when you were in high school. So we have to put the CD into our laptop, then plug the laptop in to the cassette tape situation. Then whoever is co-piloting has to hold the whole contraption on their lap. So fancy. As enchanting as "Laura" is, it's not exactly the same thing as belting out some vintage Usher. (Should my kids listen to Usher?? I dunno. But isn't it better to do that than perish in car accident along 76-East because the driver fell asleep? At the time, I thought so.)

Then there was the fly that got stuck in the car during a bathroom break. That fly kept Doms occupied and entertained for a good 30 miles before it got sucked out the window. I'll take what I can get. 

Honestly, 11+ hours in the car with my little guys was not so bad. Maybe it's like after you've given birth and the labor pains fade from your mind as you gaze at your newborn. You'll totally do it again. Once you're lounging on the beach, the car ride to get there becomes a distant memory, and you'll totally do it again. Next summer.

At the Table

Last night at dinner Brad bit his lip. His reaction was a little on the violent side, emitting clucks of concern from Dominic and I. Gianna, however, looked at him with great interest and inquired, "Did you bite your lip on accident?"

"Yes, I did. It really hurts!" Brad replied/complained.

To which she responded calmly, with just a hint of disdain, "Yeah, sometimes I do that, too. But I just don't tell anyone."

"They" were right...parenting does make you a better person. Your kids will shame you in to it. 

ta da!

*that's all for today. I have a SPECTACULAR post coming (probably tomorrow) about our beach vacay. Get hype.*

7 Quick Takes, With Photos

1. 33 weeeeeeeks hello. The end is in sight-ish. You know what is a good thing to do at this stage in the game? Read Christopher McDougall's Born to Run. Then wake up two (2!) mornings in a row to go walking, barefoot. Break into the teensiest littlest jog. You will feel like a super athlete, even though mostly you'll just look crazy.

2. Brad came home to see this in our bedroom the other day.

that would be a kitchen towel, hanging from the ceiling fan

He remarked, "Please tell me you were dusting the fan. Because I would just....that would be amazing." Uh, no. I don't do fans. If I'm really being honest, I don't really do dusting, in general. I do, however, let my son throw kitchen towels all over the place. Close enough.

3. Buh-bye!

The man who took The Rock said that according to his calculations (using the dimensions of the rock + some sort of text book he owns telling him the volume of granite) the rock weighs approximately 3200 lbs. Whatever...it's gone!

4. Gianna's last day of school was Wednesday. That evening, her school held a little "recognition ceremony," where I won the award for lazy parenting in that a) my child was the only one still wearing her stained play clothes from school that day, as opposed to a nice dress and b) I didn't bring a camera to take millions of pictures of the event. Also, forgot/neglected to make something nice for her teachers. I'm assuming at this point everyone at the school knows me well enough to realize...this is just the way it is.

 5.  I'm packing up all our crap for our beach trip, and the more I try to pack lightly, the more stuff I feel like I'm bringing. God forbid we get to New Jersey and think, 'If only we'd remembered to pack the cheese grater!"

6. Speaking of the beach, have you noticed that some people are beach people, and other people are not? If I accomplish nothing else in my parenting, please, Lord, let my children be beach people. Plus good moral character, holiness, Catholicism, etc.

7. Again with the beach.....we'll be gone for a week, and I don't know if our little condo at the top of a remodeled Victorian will have Wi-Fi...and even if it does....I'll be on the beach. So, blogging hiatus, of a planned nature. I know you are devastated, since I manage to post so regularly.

I leave you with this

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary, and have a nice weekend, a nice week, and a nice weekend again. Peace.