Might As Well Just Call it Facebook Sunday

My mom wrote to me on Friday, asking me what was up. She hadn't heard from me in a while. Oh? Is time slipping away from me once again? I suppose it is. Sorry...

I haven't had a lot of interesting things to talk about, and I've let myself get caught up in a lovely anime series called "Nodame Cantabile" for the past week (english subtitles only, lol, my brain has been chattering in mostly-made-up Japanese, complete with foreign voice inflections). My free time during the day isn't the kind I can really blog well with: Alex is all about grabbing my hands away from the keyboard and mouse when he's awake, and when he's asleep, I'm trying to work on reading lessons and play big-kid stuff with Jacob and Melinda. So, I apologize for my lack of blogging. I've definitely been going in waves of blogging and not blogging lately. Wish I could get myself back into a regular habit again.

I'm sure you're all curious about what's going on with Jesse's job. We are, too. We're really sick of being in limbo, not knowing what's going to happen, or when, or how.... Jesse seems to think that *something* needs to happen, one way or another, within a matter of a few weeks. He says either his company will run out of money, or will get a purchase offer, or will manage to somehow wrangle some extra funding from investors. But there's certainly not enough money to keep things afloat as they are for more than a few weeks. In the meantime, Jesse's getting in touch with as many recruiters as he can (his boss/co-worker type people seem to think this is the best way to find a job, and we haven't had any luck with what we *were* doing....). Hopefully we'll know what the next step in our lives will be before long. Limbo isn't fun.

So, I'll give you an update of life through the wonder of Facebook Friday. On Sunday. And maybe one of these days soon I'll finish blogging about our trip to Colorado, share videos, and all that fun jazz. You'll just have to wait and be surprised (along with myself) about when I get in the mood to do it!! :)

Saturday, July 11
9:47am
Becky is going for breakfast and window shopping at IKEA.

6:27pm
Becky wonders what happened to all those thunderstorms promised in the forecast. The lawns around here are starting to look dismally brown. :(
(See? So boring that I'm Facebooking about the weather.)

Sunday, July 12
8:53pm
Becky is mad at T-mobile. Suddenly both our phones are not getting ANY reception in our home, all day long. And I have to wait a *minimum* of 72 hours for them to check the condition of equipment and towers to see if there's a problem. In the meantime, I can only make and take calls if I'm about 100 feet away from my apartment building.

Monday, July 13
9:46am
Becky left a bunch of folded laundry on the front room floor last night, with a note for Melinda: "Put away" (complete with a picture of laundry and an arrow going to an open dresser drawer). Turns out she LOVED getting the note, and had all the laundry put away before anyone else got out of bed. And she's demanding a note for tomorrow! Ack! What chore to give her next?!?
>>> Additional comments based on feedback/comments left by others:
I haven't thought of something for tomorrow yet. The reason I came up with this idea is because I was folding laundry just before bed. I sat there, surrounded by nothing but children's clothing, and I said out loud, "I wonder if I just left these here, if Melinda would put them away in the morning?"

She often helps put the laundry away without complaint, and she's always up before the rest of us. I didn't want to risk wake the kids up by putting their things away, but I thought it was also likely that they'd quickly make a mess of things without any direction. So, I wrote a note. Since she's just learning to read still, I kept it simple and added the picture.

Now I just have to come up with something else. But she doesn't really like picking up, so I'm not sure she'd follow directions to pick up the toy room. Oddly enough, though, I KNOW she'd scrub the toilets if I put that on a note. I'd rather not have her in there without supervision, though. Maybe washing the patio door?

1:57pm
Becky just loves loves loves Keane's song, "Atlantic" from the Under The Iron Sea album.
>>> I just added it to my playlist, if you want to listen to it! It's waaaaay down at the bottom of the page, first song. Especially listen to about minute marker 2:30, where the song changes pace and tune a bit, it's just sooo beautiful.

Tuesday, July 14
11:00am
Becky had another note ready for Melinda this morning. Asked her to sort the shoe closet. She wasn't as much of a self-starter this time (it *was* a more complicated note). Once I explained it more to her, she dug right in. And now I can see the floor of my shoe closet again, and all those old/worn-out/not-fitting things -and winter things!- are finally put away. :)
>>> She did need help understanding the goal. But once I explained better, she was awesome at organizing piles of shoes, scarves, hats, winter coats (lol, I'm so awful at putting things away each season!), and so on, so I could jump in and put it all away easily.

11:26am
Becky has a working cell phone signal in her apartment again. <insert grumbling about how it took a full two days.>

3:14pm
Becky just lost another perfectly good glass to Alex's habit of tossing things over the baby gate into the kitchen. Ceramic tile seems nice and all, but I've had more broken dishes in the last year than I have in the entire 9 years before that.

Wednesday, July 15
1:03pm
Becky has a bad afternoon ahead. Alex only took a half-hour nap, thanks to driving home at naptime. He doesn't transfer well. And when I finally got him settled in bed, someone outside woke him up, and he was beyond "fixing" at that point. Sigh. Here's to hoping the ice cream truck comes by today.
>>> it didn't. :(

4:59pm
Becky notes that there actually *is* something worse than a 15-month-old who can push around chairs to get into things he otherwise shouldn't. It's called a 15-month-old who can climb to the top of a bunk bed.
>>> Dead serious. He can now climb the bunk bed ladder. I'm so cursed with physically-inclined babies.

Thursday, July 16
6:14pm
The weather page says it feels like 93 degrees outside right now. And I still haven't turned on the A/C.... though I'm beginning to be sorely tempted. Still, I'm patting myself on the back. :)
>>> It's managed to hover right around 81 degrees indoors, which isn't terrible. We've somehow managed to slowly adjust our bodies to the summer heat, for the first time in the almost-6 years we've lived here. I've never managed to keep the A/C off in July before, but I've gone several weeks without it, now!
>>> Depressing to realize it only cut our electric bill for the past month by about $20.

Friday, July 17
1:52pm
Becky is frustrated. Alex has had three *terrible* napping days in a row.

Saturday, July 18
10:45pm
Becky is finished preparing for her lesson on Charity tomorrow morning at church. :)
>>> Lesson (which was on Charity) went well!! :) Guess who was in church that Sunday? Elder Neil Andersen, of the Quorum of the Twelve. He's got 2 daughters in our ward. His wife was in Relief Society while I taught. Yikes? Actually, it didn't add to my nervousness at all. I just hope I didn't embarrass myself. ;) And having Elder Andersen there made for a really interesting Gospel Doctrine class, too, as his daughter was teaching and invited him to present a big chunk of the lesson, which was on Priesthood Keys. He is a really friendly, down-to-earth speaker. But when he recalled the time when he was recently called to the Quorum of the Twelve, and thus given keys appropriate to his calling, he was moved to tears. I have never heard our chapel so silent and reverent as when Elder Andersen stood in silence, taking a few moments to try and recover his emotions. You have to remember that our ward is so large that our Gospel Doctrine class is held in the chapel, and has the attendance equivalent to many other wards' sacrament meeting. It was quite a large group, and it was *silent* as he stood there. It was humbling, and moving. I'm thankful for men like him who put so much of their hearts into leading our church under God's direction.

Sunday, July 19
3:03pm
Becky has been having lots of fun with a 2-week free Photoshop class at jessicasprague.com. Sad that it's over! But I've learned so many neat tricks!
>>> I'll have to share some of my class projects on the blog soon! Also... I signed up for another class, which starts next month. It was just too fun (and, dare I say, useful?), and I was given a discount code... squeee!

11:58pm
Becky loved this music video. :)
(Coldplay's "Strawberry Swing", which is a fun song on it's own... set to sidewalk chalk "animation". Amazing!)

Monday, July 20
9:12am
Becky needs to drive over to the elementary school today. Even though I called and asked for registration papers mailed to me about a week and a half ago, still nothing has come. Should have taken a few days at most.

Tuesday, July 21
2:22pm
Becky is glad that it's unusually cool for July. It makes outdoor play so much more enjoyable when it's overcast and low 70's!

4:48pm
Becky had to dash outside to turn off the car alarm after Alex stole my keys from the top of the bookcase and pressed the panic button. When I got back inside, Alex was in tears. Guess he got scared. Me, I'm glad I didn't step on any glass in my hurry, since I had no shoes on. Have I mentioned before that I hate car alarms as a general rule?

6:36pm
Becky thinks she could probably feed 5 starving African children with just the amount of food Alex throws on the floor from his high chair every day. That is, if they don't mind eating floor-food.

Wednesday, July 22
9:19am
Becky is still trying to process two unusual images from my dreams last night: Jesse with amputated arms nearly up to his elbows, which was sad but didn't impact our general happiness; and Jacob as a young tree (complete with face?!) who was losing his bark, then falling over, then being prepared for death. Why is it, by the way, that if I ever dream of a child dying, it's always Jacob? That's starting to worry me!!!

1:10pm
Becky notes that ever since Alex pressed the van's key fob panic button the first time yesterday (yes, there was a 2nd time, sigh), he has been screaming in absolute hysterics any time he hears the following withing ear shot: a car horn (every time someone remotely locks their car), a large truck with squeaky brakes, a large rumble-y garbage truck, or even moving/rental trucks that beep repeatedly when backing up. Yay.
>>> He has since stopped freaking out at every single car. But now thunder is making him act the same way.

3:35pm
Becky got Melinda's brand-new, hot pink lunch box in the mail. She's so excited!

Thursday, July 23
9:35am
Becky started the day off with a bang- gotta love those morning thunderstorms that bring a lot of heavy rain!

1:38pm
Becky needs to learn how to sew children's underwear. Not satisfied with what I can find in stores, both for too-tight elastic and either boring colors or annoying characters. And not quite willing to pay the price for other people's handmade underwear.
>>> Looking at this pattern on etsy.com.

Saturday, July 25
12:41am (still felt like Friday night to me!)
Becky went out on a date with the hubby to see Harry Potter, got the curious baby back to sleep, stuffed her face with ice cream, and hopes there might be some semblance of sleeping in tomorrow morning. Doubt it, but it never hurts to hope. ;)
>>> Now owes our lovely babysitter cookies, as she refused payment since her job was so easy while we were out! She and Melinda played some games for an hour, Melinda went to bed without any trouble, and Jacob and Alex both stayed asleep the whole time we were gone.

4:36pm (the *real* Saturday!)
Becky is so so so hot. Finally caved into the A/C today. Most of July without it!

Sunday, July 26
3:10pm
Becky is a little overwhelmed with how much Melinda ONLY wants pink things these days. Pink lunchbox, pink jacket, pink shoes, pink pants, pink shirts.... ugh. My eyes are going to hurt. Pink is not one of my favorite colors.
>>> (I went internet shopping for some school stuff. Yay for Land's End backpacks being on sale, and their overstocks section. But booooooo for so much pink that I couldn't talk Melinda out of! She almost refused the cheap purple courdoroys just because of their color!!)


And there we are, all caught up again.
Things I didn't mention on Facebook: Melinda came down with a day-long fever back on Tuesday. We had gone over to play with a friend, spent an absolutely lovely day outside, and by the time we drove home, she was complaining of a headache. A older neighbor girl at our friend's house was letting the younger kids go "repelling" from the lower tree branches, and Melinda hit her head at some point. Couldn't have been hard, because she wasn't even upset. But she thought it was from that incident that she was getting a headache. I gave her some medicine around 12:30, and by 3ish, she still wans't feeling better, and I suggested she go and lay down to rest. She was wrapped in a blanket when I checked on her. At 5pm, we were about to head out the door, and she was still acting a little off, and when I felt her, I could tell she had a fever. We stayed home (took off all those shoes I had just gotten on everyone's feet!!), and she went back to lay down again. 10 minutes later, I went to check on her, and she was asleep. Shocker! She woke up around 7pm, burning up and in her typical delerious/frantic fever state. Since her head was still hurting, I gave her more medicine, and we started on bedtime. She was feeling more chipper by the time Jesse got home at 7:30ish, but still a little warm. Her fever was gone by the end of the next day. And then Alex came down with a fever in the early morning hours of Saturday. He woke up around 3am or so to nurse, and he was pretty hot. So we didn't do a whole lot on Saturday. And he still had a fever when he went to bed Saturday night, as well, so we didn't go to church. Jesse took Melinda and Jacob. Saturday night was really terrible, too. I think the fever + teething got to him, and I swear he was awake and screaming more than he was asleep. I'll be happy if we don't repeat that experience tonight. Ugh. He's fever-free now. Hoping Jacob, myself, and Jesse don't get it. Fevers in the heat of summer just aren't cool.