November Already??

Yes, it's officially November now. Where was I for the entire month of October?
Let's see....
I was holed up in the sewing room making Halloween costumes, that's where.
As much as I love sewing Halloween costumes (or any costumes), I am so glad that I am done with them. And this year I really took it upon myself to prove my insanity. I had the goal of sewing six costumes. Well, I sewed three and a half, bought one, and said screw it on the sixth.
I'm tired.
Oh, and I sewed my finger about two weekends ago. It broke the needle right in half and I decided that sewing at 1am is not a great idea.
Now that I'm free to spend time on pursuits other than attire-making, I guess I'm going to have to play catch-up for the month of October. This has really been a non-stop month for us.
Tonight was the Trunk or Treat and dinner fundraiser at church. I needed to be there by 5pm to help set-up, but George ended up having a departmental meeting from 4 to 5, so I had the privelege of finishing up costumes, getting myself all the children dressed and out the door, and hauling all of us plus candy buckets, bags, and assorted costume pieces into church by myself. Fun, fun, fun. At one point, I think both babies were screaming in the car while Bart was trying to explain to me some obscure bit of Star Wars-ology, but we got there pretty much on time with only a minimal amount of yelling and bribery.
I usually overplan and stress out on holidays, Halloween being one of the worst. George likes to say that we come close to getting a divorce every Halloween. Last year was miserable. It was a nice combination of my aforementioned overplanning and stressing along with George's grumpy disapproval of the whole "pointless" holiday and a general bad attitude toward what he deems as frivolity. So what if Halloween is frivolous, or even pointless? Who cares? It's the one holiday where it's OK to be rowdy and a little bit weird. I love the costumes and the candy. I love the chill in the air and the remote possibility of magic things happening.
So this year I tried to have everyone's costume made before Halloween day so we could just relax and enjoy things. Luckily the children had a teacher workday today, so we did not have to get up early. I think Lucy and I slept until 8:30 or 9am. The boys were up early of course, watching Halloween cartoons on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. Skylar emerged from her bedroom as Lucy and I were coming down the hallway. She had her nose stuck in a book, as usual, still in her NC State PJs.
I feel kind of bad that we didn't carve a pumpkin this year, but we just really didn't have the time. I'm generally the one that initiates it, and I usually have the baby in one arm, not a good combination when there's pumpkin goo involved. We did decorate the outside of our house, however. It's actually quite nice, and it looked really pretty before my orange mums and my light purple and dark purple asters died. I don't know why the asters died - they had been really heatlhy. Who knows?
I just fell asleep typing and hit the "K" key all the way across the page. I think it's time for me to be getting to bed. I have a TON of pictures to post, though. The photo attachment feature is giving me problems, too, so I'll just wait until tomorrow to deal with it.

Saving Babies

I received this email today from the March of Dimes. This is a charity that our family supports and that I really believe in. We have raised money for the past two years for the March for Babies in the spring and hope to do so again. Our children love that we are helping to save babies. What a great mission!
I signed the petition and urge others to do so as well.

Glutton for punishment

Wal-Mart is evil. I think most of us can agree on that. So why is it that we keep going back?
I'll tell you why. It's because where else can I go to buy potting soil, three yards of fabric, diapers, steaks, a birthday pinata, Claritin, computer paper, and a new bra all at once?
Like a Hershey's chocolate bar, it keeps calling me back for more. Like a shoe sale at the mall, it drags me in to spend money that I don't really have.
I go in for mascara, I come out with zucchini, cheddar cheese popcorn, girl's High School Musical underwear, a Thomas the Tank Engine video, and new bath towels. No mascara, because I forgot to get it.
Like a black hole, Wal-Mart sucks me in, and before I know it, I am standing outside by my car four hours later with three bags and a seventy-dollar receipt, trying to figure out where the heck the time and my money went.
I think I'll get George the engineer on this one. It should make an interesting study.
And that's another thing. One time I heard George tell the kids, who were complaining about having to go with us to Wal-Mart, "Well, I don't want to go either, but we have to. Every time we go there, your mother and I almost get a divorce."
And it's true. We pull into the parking lot smiling and hopeful, shopping list in hand. We think to ourselves, "This is going to be quick. In and out. We only have a few things to get."
Then somehow, between the ten minutes it takes to park and dodging shopping carts as frantic people hurl around the aisles without watching out for other shoppers, our smiles begin to slip. Sometime while we are waiting for the three old friends to break up their reunion and move out of the middle of the cereal aisle so we can get the ("It has to be the Cars cereal, mom!") freaking breakfast cereal and get out before the baby starts wailing, and trying to hunt down someone to find out if the size one sneakers are the ONLY ones they're out of, we start to get a headache. Then, during the twenty minutes standing in line at one of the three check-out lanes open while the children beg for the multitude of candy taunting them from the racks and the cheap two-dollar toys and bottles of hand-sanitizer just within reach of their chubby little fingers, we start to lose our tempers, perhaps even threaten a spanking when a toddler refuses to continue sitting in the shopping cart and starts yelling "Stop it!" while you try to keep his stubborn little butt from toppling out. So, understandably, when your husband asks whether it's really necessary for you to buy the "seven dollar foundation" (even though when you questioned the necessity for the laser-guided scissors he purchased at Harbor Freight last week, he got huffy), you snap "They don't make anything any cheaper, unless you want me to stick my head in one of the grocery bags, which I'm sure would solve a couple of problems! Then you could collect my life insurance and marry a wife with a bigger rack!" deliberately loud enough for the cashier and the couple behind you to hear.
Of course, once you get to the car, load up your groceries, and get the kids buckled in, you begin to feel your head clear. Once you're safely out of the parking lot, you wonder what had even caused the argument in the first place. The kids are good as gold now, perhaps even asleep, if you had to make an after-dinner emergency run.
OK, Wal-mart is basically the gateway to hell.

So why, why, did I head there first thing this morning with both Lucy and Drake and a shopping list consisting of diapers and a large fake spider for Halloween? I don't know, but when I came out sixty-two dollars later at quarter past noon, I had forgotten the spider. And I bought the wrong size costume pattern because Drake was pulling the pattern drawers open and throwing the size dividers onto the floor.
So guess what? I have to go back tomorrow. But that's not even the worst part.
The worst part is that when I go back tomorrow, I have to take the wrong-sized pattern and stand in line at customer service.
How's that for a scary story?

Interesting Tune

Without getting into the deeper meaning of any of it, I'm really into this song right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs

I also found this one. Is it actually on Guitar Hero? Kinda cool anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz32F7N3wrg

What It's All About

Today Lucy absolutely made my day.
We were having the prayer at the end of Conference. I had just come back into the playroom (where we were watching Conference on the computer) from checking on dinner. As I bowed my head, I noticed Lucy was watching me from her bouncy chair. She just kept staring at me from all the way across the room, so I smiled at her. And she smiled right back at me!!
She's smiled at me loads of time over the past few weeks, but always when I was right there in front of her, never from across the room. It was so neat.
It totally made up for it later tonight when Lucy woke up from her nap and puked all over me on the way down the stairs. She had been trying all day to ruin my outfit and she finally succeeded. It's the same outfit she puked on Thursday before my Charmed Moments show, the new black shirt and jeans. This morning she almost got me twice before we left the house to go shopping. An outfit can only survive for so long against such odds.
I read over my last entry and realized how random I sounded. I guess when I look back in years to come, it'll remind me how sleep-deprived and nutty I was.
Tonight I caught part of the movie based on Nicholas Sparks' book, The Notebook. It got me thinking about my own writing career (or lack of it). At his book signing last year, I asked for some advice on getting my own work published. He advised me that I would not break into the biz with children's books (of which, I have two written but unpublished). He also advised me to consider the market and what people want to read and what was selling rather than what I might personally want to write. Which makes sense. It's just that I am just confused about the entire thing lately.
I don't even know what I want to write anymore. I feel like something is just missing or broken. I just need some inspiration, I think, in order to get myself back on track. At this point in my life, I can best relate to kids' books. I don't even feel connected to the person I was when I started writing some things that might sell quite well. I'm all muddled. I can't focus like I used to. So do I keep plugging away, or do I just give it a rest and wait until I get inspired? That could take years.
While I'm sitting here debating my life's path, George is blissfully absorbed in Guitar Hero, playing Metallica as Lou the devil, or demon, or whatever he is. The Wii has become like another member of our family. I have considered rearranging our downstairs and buying some new furniture in order to best accomodate it. You see, our family room is just not set up to give us the best playing area. It would be best if we moved our whole entertainment center along with the Wii into the playroom and bought a sofa bed (I justify this by the fact that the children could now have their sleepovers in the playroom). We could then get a smaller TV to put in the family room and move the sofas around to open the room up a bit more.
Great plan, but does anyone else see something wrong with this picture??
To get back to the topic of this post: furniture, video games, and STUFF is not "what it's all about". Sometimes you really have to stop and remind yourself of that. What is it all about?That rare, precious smile from across the room that makes you feel like a million bucks, even if you don't have two coins to rub together. Because that smile would be just as sweet if we were living in a shack, sitting on logs, and had never heard of TVs or Wiis. It might be even sweeter, because there would be less to distract me from it.
Now, the laptop. That I couldn't live without...

Reasons I Love Fall

Cool weather.
Colorful leaves.
Football (even if I don't really pay much attention to it, there's something comforting about the drone of it on the TV).
Pumpkins.
Apples.
How clear the stars are at night.
How blue the sky is during the day.
How the sunlight is golden and mellow, especially in the afternoon.
School events.
Sweaters and jeans.
Not having to shave my legs every single day.
Snuggling with my kids on the couch in the mornings because it's cold in the house.
Pretty much everything!

Well, I've made a resolution to myself. I realized that I complain too much, even when I cloak my complaints in humor. I want to start counting my blessings a lot more, not just when I say prayers at night, but all day long. That way, when some jerk cuts me off in traffic or jumps ahead of me in line (as some guy did in Chic Fil A yesterday), I won't immediately go off. I want to be a nicer person. I guess I am a fairly nice person - most people would say that I am - but sometimes I just don't feel nice. I feel downright mean. I think my kids probably think all I ever do is yell about bad drivers (although we honestly do almost get hit by senile or just plain reckless drivers at least once a week).
Today for instance, I was crossing the parking lot at Piggly Wiggly and this lady who was busy smoking started backing up as I was walking nearby. She didn't see me apparently, so I quickened my pace to get out of her way. However, she wasn't looking AT ALL, because as fast as I walked out of the way, she just kept backing up fast and almost hit me! I really couldn't believe it. When she FINALLY looked and saw that she'd almost hit me, she had the nerve to give me a dirty look, like I was inconveniencing her. So sorry, but last time I checked, watching for pedestrians while backing out is pretty darn important. How about let's put down the cigarette and just drive??
Really, though, when my kids look back on our time together, I don't want them to say, "You know, Mom sure did yell a lot."
I guess a wake up call should have been the time last year when Skylar was reading "The Secret Garden" in the car. At one point, she looked up and said, "Mom, I don't know if you want me to read this book or not. There's a bad word in it."
Well, sometimes, Skylar (thank goodness) has a very naive idea of what constitutes a bad word. For instance, she reported to me once that her friend's brother had called her friend the "i" word. "The 'i' word?" I had echoed. What the heck is the "i" word?? So I had told her to whisper it to me. This terrible word turned out to be "idiot", which is incidentally one of my favorite mutterings while driving.
So back to the "Secret Garden" incident.
With the above "i word" occasion in mind, I asked Skylar what the bad word started with. She replied "j", to which I laughed, relieved, "Oh, you mean 'jerk'." Also part of my driving mantra.
"No, mom. That's not it. It's the other word for 'donkey'."
Well. I was thoroughly rebuked. I clearly remembered the instance in the book when gruff old Ben Weatherstaff says "jackass." And yes, I am guilty of uttering that one, too, but I always thought I had done it under my breath. Apparently, children have marvelous hearing on occasion. Such as when candy is mentioned, or Christmas presents discussed, or the word ice cream spelled out. Ditto their memories when dessert or a trip to the park is promised.
So I am not mom of the year. Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I spank. Sometimes I promise a trip to the park and then realize there isn't time. And you may be asking what the heck any of this has to do with the reasons I love fall time. Well, I really don't know. Just like I don't know sometimes how it ends up being 1pm and all I've accomplished for the day is building a Lego tower, changing three poopy diapers, and putting on deodorant. And what, my husband asks me, did you do all day? Well, again, I really don't know, but whatever it was sure made me tired.
I am also apparently a puke magnet.
Last week, we were elated to put Lucy down for bed at 9:30 pm and have her sleep until 6:30 am. Nine whole hours! She woke up just long enough to eat, drench me and the Boppy with everything she had just eaten, eat again, keep it down this time, and go back to sleep. She then slept from 7:30 am to 10:30 am. I have no complaints in the sleep area.
Last night, after Young Women, Lucy puked all over me again while I was feeding her. She was lying against my shoulder while I was trying to burp her. Therefore, the Boppy got off without so much as a drop spilled, but my neck and shirt got the brunt of it. It's pretty gross having cold puke making your clothes cling to your skin.
Tonight I had my first Charmed Moments show since Lucy's birth. It was at my friend Jamie's house. She lives in Fairfield Harbour, about thirty minutes away, even though it's still in New Bern. I had plenty of time to get there. I was nursing Lucy about fifteen minutes before we needed to leave when - blahhhh - she puked everywhere. Everything she had just eaten, loads of it, all over me. It doused my new black shirt and my new jeans. It puddled on the sofa (thank goodness for leather) and I think some dripped down into the cushions. It soaked her, too, so I had to change both of us. Of course, once we were cleaned up and dressed in dry clothes, I had to feed her all over again. And then drag her out to the show. I was pretty stressed out, and more than a little sick of getting vomited on. I was also twenty minutes late getting out of the house.
I'm not sure why Lucy keeps puking up enormous amounts of her milk. I'm trying to stay away from dairy products, since almost everyone in our house has some degree of lactose intolerance, but sometimes I sneak in some or just plain forget. Two of her worst episodes have been after I have eaten a Big Mac for lunch, so I speculate whether it is the combination of the onions and the cheese, since she doesn't seem to mind when I eat a plain cheeseburger. One slice of cheese is usually OK, but ice cream or straight up milk seem to really tear her up. She's also been pretty congested lately, so I've wondered whether mucus may be making her gag and throw up her milk.
I do know that after puking, Lucy usually cracks an ear-to-ear smile. Either she is feeling loads better, or the sight of mommy covered in regurgitated milk is quite funny.
Oh, and there's another reason I love fall: cold and flu season.
(Just the tiniest bit of sarcasm, there).