Today I caught myself totally going on Mommy auto-pilot. I was trying to get Jacob changed into some fresh clothes. He had opened up a closet he's never gotten into before, and discovered a Super Soaker squirt gun. He was playing with it while I was trying to change him. I started getting annoyed, and said to him, "Don't play with that, it's not a toy!" .... pause to think .... Oh really, Becky? A Super Soaker isn't a toy?? .... shakes head at herself .... I need to think before I open my mouth, I guess. Take more pauses throughout my day instead of plowing through things trying to get them done just because I don't want to be bothered by distractions.
My A/C game ended in a rather unspectacular and sudden fashion this afternoon, also. Alex was crying beyond my ability to soothe him, Melinda and Jacob were fighting, and I was feeling extremely flustered on top of being very very warm and sticky. So I threw in the towel and turned on the nice cool air for almost 45 minutes. And it only cooled the house down to about 78 degrees, lol. But it made the rest of the day bearable.
We turned in our lease application for the new apartment this afternoon. The apartment is on a second level and doesn't look as "green" as our current complex does (there seems to be a lot more concrete and a higher density of buildings), and I think it will be really hard to say goodbye to our ability to walk from our porch out to the common green area here... not to mention the lack of any stairs to get into our apartment... but I think the switch will still be worth it. I sure hope so, at least.
We went to the pool this evening after dinner. I was surprised that the water was actually very comfortably warm already. I didn't have to take my time getting in. It felt great. Melinda really wants to be able to swim. But even with a life vest on, she still got a few face-fulls of water. I should probably pay for swimming lessons for her someday. I really should have done it while I didn't have an infant to care for. Jacob was mildly interested in the big pool, too, but he's more touchy than Melinda right now about water in his eyes. He also got a few gulps and sputters from water in his face, even though I was holding him. I took him back to the wading pool after just a couple minutes. And then he figured out how to open the latch on the wading pool gate, and I spent the rest of our time there having to guard it so he wouldn't run out to the big pool. Not because he wanted to swim in the big pool, mind you, but because he wanted to go get a pool noodle that he saw on the edge (that belonged to someone else).
Both kids happily crashed asleep without any effort tonight. Yay, quiet house! Now if only I could get Alex to stay asleep without wearing him in the sling, we would both be much more comfortable!
One other random note I wanted to share, is Alex's favorite song. This is a Laurie Berkner song called Blow a Kiss, from the album Under a Shady Tree. Every time the song makes a kiss sound, I give Alex a big kiss. Usually on the mouth, because that's his favorite, but sometimes I try to kiss the song-appropriate body part instead. He gets the biggest grin when I sing this, and opens his mouth really wide in anticipation of the kisses. And today it was almost like he wanted to sing along with me, because he was talking while I was singing! :)
For whatever reason, my embedded music simply won't follow the do not autostart rule of HTML, so I'm going to go with another option. Please CLICK HERE to play the song. You'll be asked to either open it with a Windows Media Player or save it to your computer. Less annoying than playing automatically as soon as you arrive at my blog, despite my telling it not to.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Bragging rights
I just have to share that I did the new look for the blog all by my lonesome self. :)
I followed some guides at Tricks for New Bloggers, but I did all the header creation and background editing by myself. I think it looks just lovely!! :) I even clapped my hands, I was so pleased with how it turned out. I really love the new look of my blog, and it feels so good to have done it myself instead of paying for someone else to do it, or grabbing something free out there in the world wide web.
Original images, though arranged and altered slightly by myself, came from Shabby Princess Designs. The images are part of the Promise Collection. I like this collection so much, I used it for Alex's birth announcement, as well. Just in case it looks familiar to some of you, that's probably why. :)
I followed some guides at Tricks for New Bloggers, but I did all the header creation and background editing by myself. I think it looks just lovely!! :) I even clapped my hands, I was so pleased with how it turned out. I really love the new look of my blog, and it feels so good to have done it myself instead of paying for someone else to do it, or grabbing something free out there in the world wide web.
Original images, though arranged and altered slightly by myself, came from Shabby Princess Designs. The images are part of the Promise Collection. I like this collection so much, I used it for Alex's birth announcement, as well. Just in case it looks familiar to some of you, that's probably why. :)
Feeling the heat
We're in the middle of a pre-summer heat wave out here in Maryland. Not just hot, but oh so humid. Right now at 8:21pm, it is 92 degrees with 47% humidity, according to weather.com. That makes for a heat index of 96 degrees. At almost 8:30pm. Almost 2 weeks before summer even officially starts.
Every year as summer approaches, I try to hold off on turning on the air conditioning. It's just a huge electricity guzzler. Our electricity bill can easily double just by trying to keep the indoor temperature comfortable. I figure that if I wait to turn the A/C on, my body will get more used to the hotter temperatures, and then two things will happen: I will feel slightly more comfortable outdoors in the heat, and I won't need the A/C to be on quite so much. But it's so hard to resist the A/C when it's so humid! The air gets so moist that it feels hard to breath. Every single piece of your clothing sticks to your skin. And carrying around a 14+ pound baby to try to get him to sleep is nearly like walking into a sauna.
And yet, we've managed to keep the air conditioning off so far. (Well, except on one evening, when Jesse came home from the air-conditioned work office, to me using a stovetop burner and the oven at the same time, with nothing more than a fan running.) Today we've mostly avoided cooking hot food, or turning on the lights, and we've kept the blinds closed and the fans turned on, and cold water readily available. And at about 5pm, I remarked to Jesse how surprised I was that I felt fairly comfortable in our 80+ degree, humid apartment.
Now it almost feels like a challenge - when everyone else in the surrounding area has their A/C running full blast, how long can I keep mine off?? How well can I avoid that huge jump in my electricity bill?
At times like this, I seriously miss the Colorado heat. Sure, it'd get to 100 degrees in the summer, but it was dry heat. You don't stick to yourself in dry heat, you only feel like you're baking. That's a lot different from melting! (And, arguably, more comfortable?) Also, the very best part, it actually cools off after the sun goes down. Once it's dark, you can set up fans in your windows to circulate the air through the house, sucking out all the hot air and letting in all the cool air. If you do it all night, you'll actually need your blankets, because it gets down in the 60's, consistently! But here in Maryland? Tonight, we can look forward to a lovely 75 degrees with 67% humidity.... which is bad enough, but that won't happen until 4:00am!!! It's still going to be in the 80's through the 3 o'clock hour. Yikes. Not much potential for cooling off, there. I'm learning to sleep without covers, and with a fan blowing directly on me. Both would otherwise normally really bother me.
I know, I know, I *could* turn on the air conditioning to be comfortable at night. But that would just set up a pattern. If I get used to cool, dry air, I'll need it that much more! If a fan works, use it, I say!
As for my other goal of avoiding sweets, well, I've done really well, I think. I didn't freeze the birthday cake, though, and I've allowed myself to eat a piece every day since my birthday so far. Maybe I'll go ahead and send the rest of it with Jesse to work tomorrow, huh? But avoiding the sugar has really helped. I'm feeling much more strong against my cravings, now, and I'm feeling the cravings much less frequently already! So I didn't have a perfect week of no sweets, but I'm feeling much better about where I'm at. I lasted all the way from last Sunday until my birthday on Friday, and I've moderated myself since then. And I've snacked on a lot more fruits and veggies, yay! I'll try and keep up the pattern this week. Jesse's requested a pie instead of a cake for his birthday, so that'll be a lot less temptation in the house this week, too. I feel like I deserve a small pat on the back, at least, don't you? :)
Every year as summer approaches, I try to hold off on turning on the air conditioning. It's just a huge electricity guzzler. Our electricity bill can easily double just by trying to keep the indoor temperature comfortable. I figure that if I wait to turn the A/C on, my body will get more used to the hotter temperatures, and then two things will happen: I will feel slightly more comfortable outdoors in the heat, and I won't need the A/C to be on quite so much. But it's so hard to resist the A/C when it's so humid! The air gets so moist that it feels hard to breath. Every single piece of your clothing sticks to your skin. And carrying around a 14+ pound baby to try to get him to sleep is nearly like walking into a sauna.
And yet, we've managed to keep the air conditioning off so far. (Well, except on one evening, when Jesse came home from the air-conditioned work office, to me using a stovetop burner and the oven at the same time, with nothing more than a fan running.) Today we've mostly avoided cooking hot food, or turning on the lights, and we've kept the blinds closed and the fans turned on, and cold water readily available. And at about 5pm, I remarked to Jesse how surprised I was that I felt fairly comfortable in our 80+ degree, humid apartment.
Now it almost feels like a challenge - when everyone else in the surrounding area has their A/C running full blast, how long can I keep mine off?? How well can I avoid that huge jump in my electricity bill?
At times like this, I seriously miss the Colorado heat. Sure, it'd get to 100 degrees in the summer, but it was dry heat. You don't stick to yourself in dry heat, you only feel like you're baking. That's a lot different from melting! (And, arguably, more comfortable?) Also, the very best part, it actually cools off after the sun goes down. Once it's dark, you can set up fans in your windows to circulate the air through the house, sucking out all the hot air and letting in all the cool air. If you do it all night, you'll actually need your blankets, because it gets down in the 60's, consistently! But here in Maryland? Tonight, we can look forward to a lovely 75 degrees with 67% humidity.... which is bad enough, but that won't happen until 4:00am!!! It's still going to be in the 80's through the 3 o'clock hour. Yikes. Not much potential for cooling off, there. I'm learning to sleep without covers, and with a fan blowing directly on me. Both would otherwise normally really bother me.
I know, I know, I *could* turn on the air conditioning to be comfortable at night. But that would just set up a pattern. If I get used to cool, dry air, I'll need it that much more! If a fan works, use it, I say!
As for my other goal of avoiding sweets, well, I've done really well, I think. I didn't freeze the birthday cake, though, and I've allowed myself to eat a piece every day since my birthday so far. Maybe I'll go ahead and send the rest of it with Jesse to work tomorrow, huh? But avoiding the sugar has really helped. I'm feeling much more strong against my cravings, now, and I'm feeling the cravings much less frequently already! So I didn't have a perfect week of no sweets, but I'm feeling much better about where I'm at. I lasted all the way from last Sunday until my birthday on Friday, and I've moderated myself since then. And I've snacked on a lot more fruits and veggies, yay! I'll try and keep up the pattern this week. Jesse's requested a pie instead of a cake for his birthday, so that'll be a lot less temptation in the house this week, too. I feel like I deserve a small pat on the back, at least, don't you? :)
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