7 Quick Takes

1.) Tim had a job interview down in LA today. He was up at 3:30, out the door by 5, landed around 8, interview at 10, back in the car at 11:20, inside the Burbank airport at 12:45. He'll be landing in Oakland at 3:05 and back home by dinner. How's that for a quick take. From what he's told me so far, it sounds like it went really well, so here's hoping and praying. This could be a great job for him - definitely different than what he's done before, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's time for a change. There's more to say, but I feel like if I talk too much right now I'll jinx something. So let's just pray, okay?

2.) Last night was our earliest bedtime night in the past week. This is because we abandoned our efforts at getting Chris to fall asleep in his bedroom and just let him fall asleep with Tim on our bed. It took him about five minutes. The Big Boy Bed transition has been a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated, and it's come at the exact time that he's discovered that he's tall enough to play with the light switches. So my little Boss of Everyone is always turning lights on and off at the most inopportune times, not the least of which is bedtime. That overhead light is so stimulating, but he doesn't want to have it off because "Me no see, Mommmeee!" I try to explain to him that you're not supposed to be able to see at night night time, but it never works. You try rationalizing with a two year old and let me know how it works for you, okay? So anyway, I've been seeking out advice as to what to do with this whole scene and I think that what we're going to do is string Christmas lights ("Hoho Lights") around his room. I have one of those adapters that you can put in your porch light so you can use a switch to turn them on and off and am hoping that it will work just as well in his ceiling fixture. This way I can string lights around his room without worrying about the wires being dangerous for him, AND when he turns on his switch he'll just turn on the pretty Christmas light rather than that God-Awful, Make You Want To Pluck Out Your Eyes Overhead Light. For a boy who still asks to watch "Ho Ho" (any Christmas movie) EVERY SINGLE DAY (okay, and also has a Santa Claus carpet on the floor in his room) this could be HEAVENLY.

3.) This morning the aforementioned son peed so much that he actually left a puddle on Tim's side of the bed. THANK GOD FOR THAT MATTRESS PAD I WON FROM FAITH & FAMILY. I certainly wasn't planning on washing sheets today, but I suppose when I drag my exhausted self into bed tonight I'll be grateful for the mishap. I swear to you that you've never seen this much pee in your life. I could have WRUNG OUT HIS SHORTS that he was wearing and they really would have dripped. If I think about it too much it makes me heave-y. So let's just leave it at that.

4.) Jacob is crawling like a superstar and it is so cute to watch. He hasn't picked up all that much speed yet, but it's so precious to watch that chubby little bottom squirming across the carpet. The problem is that he doesn't really watch where he's going, so he only stops when he hits his head on something. Today I could hear that he had reached the bookcase before I even looked up for the visual proof. This whole "not watching where he's going" thing let him directly into the edge of a Costco-sized Huggies box this morning, where he scraped up the side of his face and (how he did it I don't know) made his gums bleed all over his teeth. Good grief! Daddy goes back to work (hopefully) and boy did we get slammed on this first day of having him away. Being a SAHM with two kids (Tim's been home since Jake was born) is new to me - today was my baptism by fire.

5.) I'm super excited to meet Maggie and Emily and everyone else in Sacramento this September. I need to read some of these other blogs so that I know who I'll be spending my Saturday with. I won't deny that this trip has been the driving force behind starting back up with the blog. I've decided that Twitter is much more my style. Quick and easy. But I'm going to give the blog another try to see how it goes. I'm hoping that getting everyone back into a normal routine around here will afford me a little more time to myself to sit and write here and there. That would be nice.

6.) We were talking the other night and both agreed that if Tim DOES get this job, we'll be starting our house hunt IMMEDIATELY. Yay!!!! I've already decided that, thanks to the pregnancy, it's not premature to start packing up my winter clothes and putting them into the garage. They're not going to fit me this winter anyway, so either it will afford me more closet space until winter 2010 when I'll just bring them back in (which would mean we're still here. BOO.) OR! Or I'll already have a good amount of my clothes packed up and ready to go for the move. THAT would be lovely - the prepacking AND the move.

7.) As we speak, Rachael Ray is cooking spinach fettuccine. You know, I'm not a big fan of the colored pastas. I just don't like the taste as much. Give me some plain white pasta any day. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much right now, considering I'm supposed to be "staying away from the white stuff," as my doctor reminds me every month. But still. I'm a pasta purist. What can I say?

If "Let's Make A Deal" were still on TV I'd be SO. RICH.

You know when you don't call someone for a really long time and then you think about calling them but feel bad about how long it's been so you keep not calling? And the cycle just goes on and on until it's May 26th and the last time you called was March 20th? MARCH 20TH! Well that is where we find ourselves now, isn't it.

My apologies for not calling.

It hasn't been for wont of material. A LOT has happened since March 20th - I've found out I'm pregnant, for example. Jacob had his first birthday. Tim had an interview. The overly-loving-on-the-verge-of-being-really-weird-and-creepy guy at Church whipped out a camera and started photographing my children at Mass. (Okay, we will have to deal with this one separately). But that (and all of the other goings on in the past two months) have all been SO BIG that I haven't figured out how to deal with them, let alone WRITE them, and so I've put it off and there's the cycle all over again.

So instead of filling in the dead space, we're starting fresh. Right here. Today. Sound good? Good. This works well considering the fact that today has been a monumental day. It is the day I cleaned out my $10 target canvas tote bag. I purchased said bag with the intention of having something big enough (and cheap enough) that it could literally carry everything without being a diaper bag. You know that bag? And everything it really did catch.

Today, in my navy blue canvas $10 tote, I recovered:
1 apple nutrigrain bar wrapper
2 avent pacifier caps
Plastic bear with fish in mouth
Bare Escentuals Buxom Lips in "dolly" (Thanks Sherb. I LOVE this.)
1 smashed blueberry nutrigrain bar in wrapper
1 pair toddler sized blue & brown dress socks
a tissue
plastic wrapper for pocket tissues
baby tylenol
a tiny plastic horse
an old shopping list
a broken pencil with a like-new green eraser. I love those cap erasers.
a non-broken pencil
$11. six $1 bills and one $5. Someone is going to Starbucks tomorrow.
one USGA notepad
an empty Lourdes Holy Water bottle
one grey crayon
Christopher's "Baby HoHo" - a tiny ornament of Santa wearing a t-shirt, lifting weights.
another tissue
2 sheets of song lyrics from our latest youth ministry evening
another grocery list
a can of spray-on sunscreen
3 separate torn papers
1 purple mitten
one side of the white strips you rip off the back of a bandaid
an empty fruit snacks bag
A blue and lavender semi truck
2 separate travel first-aide kits
1 pack of Orbit Maui Watermelon Mint gum. mmmm. delicious.
a pen that only works sometimes.
an antique bell from my grandma's house
a penny
one strawberry nutrigrain bar wrapper
2 smashed apple nutrigrain bars, in wrappers
6 used tissues. I know. We had man colds recently - another noteworthy event that you missed.
one lego person
2 baby spoons
plastic toy giraffe
plush toy giraffe
plastic Sponge Bob from Burger King kids meal -promptly thrown in trash
blue poker chip
my wallet
my cell phone
2 sippies, empty
1 tupperware of mac-n-cheese - we just came home from lunch at the grandparents' house
a plastic pig mama with four little baby pigs suckling away
a tiny plastic horse - does this make 2 horses? I've lost track.
one chip clip

break for cutest thing ever - Christopher just escaped his room and ran all the way downstairs just to give me a kiss. Then promptly returned to Daddy who was waiting in his room. MELT MY HEART.

3 more torn pieces of paper
another old shopping list
a small piece of bark
1 pair of white toddler-sized athletic socks
a hand-held mirror
one pink barrette, plastic - I have no. idea.
1/2 packet of pocket kleenex
1 size 6 diaper
1 pull-up
a mother's day card from a friend at church
Clinique lip gloss #406 "stellar plumb"
one board book - "Baby's First Bible Stories"
ziploc bag filled with almonds - promptly eaten during the arduous process of making this list
My grandma's "SF Port of Entry" photo badge from the 1940s. Very cool.
antique dinner bell from Grandma's kitchen
2 always pads
a Divine Mercy holy card
a ziploc filled to capacity with goldfish - okay, every time I say ziploc what I should REALLY say is "jelly belly bag." You know those jelly belly bags that you can fill up at the candy store? Well, it's a long story, but let's just say that thanks to the kindness of others I have not had to buy real ziploc bags in at least 6 months.
one red Volkswagen beatle with Canada's flag painted on it.
a real ziploc with 6 candy corns in it - I confiscated this from my child at Mass after his well-meaning grandparents brought him a snack to keep him occupied. We don't eat in church - a family rule that I have yet to be able to drive home with the extendeds.
1 maroon sharpie
1 Target brand fiber-one bar
1 blue pacifier
a hairbrush
3 more used tissues
a restaurant mint
1 navy blue infant sized zip-up hoodie sweatshirt
1 bottle of potassium supplements with receipt
1 red & white sock, Christopher's
a plastic travel container of Huggies baby wipes
Christopher's baseball cap
Clinique lip gloss #04, "sunset"
another torn paper
4 hotwheels: 1 motorcycle, 1 car, 2 trucks
another grocery receipt
and....another tissue

And I've been wondering why my back has been giving me such trouble?