every day is like saturday

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Out! And about …

I wrote what’s below while we were still in California and never published it. I do that a lot.

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Ten days out of the apartment and I am so excited to be moving along. Something about that place was sucking the life out of me.

Lee has a few more weeks of work before we can leave for New Mexico so we’re stuffed into a motel that takes cats until then. It’s pretty much alright in a at least it’s better than the apartment kind of way. They have some odd policy where they can’t hand me the sheets so I can make the beds myself. They have to do it for me while I stand outside the room for 20 minutes and I am finding that delirioulsy annoying. I mean REALLY.

In other, less annoying news .. Jack and Olivia have been having a lot of outside play time. The old apartment didn’t have a good outside play space. It wasn’t kid friendly at all. But here they’ve gone swimming and had treasure hunts with plastic gold coins and hand drawn maps. Jack loops the sidewalk on his scooter about 200 times a day and is mastering the hula hoop.

Next stop: Albuquerque, baby!

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bits and pieces of a new day

Jack woke up this morning just as Joe Biden was being sworn in. He ate a banana chocolate chip muffin he and Olivia helped make yesterday and continued to watch with me up until Obama was sworn in and then went to play Spider-man3 on xbox. 

Olivia woke up about 12:30 and chattered away about playing Viva Pinata the night before. She earned a new pinata and has 5 helpers now helping her with her garden. She’s taking really good care of it and it’s getting quite large. She also had a banana chocolate chip muffin and then another while she cut out the letters: O B A M A, decorated them red and blue and taped them to the wall. Our kids are kind of political in their own little ways and they also really love tape. 

I talked to Jack about spending a few minutes a day working on his speech. He groaned and grinned at the same time. He knows that sometimes it’s hard to understand him, but he says he’s fine with that and that talking normal is boring. Gotta love that kid. 

They both wanted Thai for dinner. We ordered panang curry and the waitress suggested we not get that for the kids because even ordered mild it’s spicy. We ordered it anyway and they both had seconds. When Olivia was a little nursling she would refuse baby food but would eat spinach paneer at Indian restaurants and Jack shakes Tabasco on his pizza. My kids can handle the spicy. 

While we were waiting for our food a song came on and Jack said, “Oh this is from Rock Band.” Olivia was very quick to correct him, “No Jack,  it’s Taylor Swift.” Then she gave me a big grin and swayed to the music in her chair smug in her music knowledge.

After dinner we stopped at Game Dude. Olivia got Zoo Tycoon and Jack got Lego StarWars II: The Original Trilogy. They were both flippin’ thrilled. We looked at Wii games and all agreed: WE CAN NOT WAIT TO GET THE Wii! But wait we will. We need more space for it .. soon. soon. soon.

Next stop: the drug store. BubbleBerry is the only flavor of toothpaste they will use and we were out. Olivia added a Pink Lemonaid Lip Smackers to her growing collection and Jack had fun walking with the canes. He asked why people use them and when I told him he said he needed a cane because sometimes his leg is sore and he can’t put any weight on it. That was news to me. We did not buy the cane, sometimes I do say no.

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And She Does Not Like McCain!

I’m sitting here trying to write about Olivia talking politics with Jack a couple of nights ago (so I don’t forget!) and I can’t remember anything more than coming in from the kitchen so I could hear her better. She was explaining something to Jack about the up coming election while McCain was on the TV screen and she said; “And we DO NOT like McCain!”

She amazes me every day.

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Halfway between morning and noon

Shane has left for class, Jack is playing Lego Indiana Jones and Olivia is eating a butter burger with ketchup for breakfast. One cat is napping on a pile of clean clothes and the other is rubbing against my foot reminding me that he would like his midmorning snack. I should get on the treadmill (or maybe put away the clean clothes?) but instead I’m downloading free demos of some games I think the kids will like and thinking about another cup of coffee.

One game is already downloaded, one is 71% complete and 4 more are in the queue.

Olivia finished her burger and nudged me aside to show some stuff on Webkinz and then we did an image search to get ideas for some spooky Halloween treats she wants to make. To our shopping list we’ve added: gross candy, food coloring, cupcake liners and glow-in-the-dark fangs. Mwahahaha!

She also reminded me I did not make the banana chocolate chip bread I said I was going to .. so gotta get on that.

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Why I hide the baseball bat.

The above video is a true and accurate representation of what waking up is like for me. I think it’s payback for all that loving I force on my furry little babies cats.

I can actually sleep through a lot of what the cats can dish out but I’m a little worried Lee will kill them if he gets his balls jumped on one more time.

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Exhausted

Monday afternoon we started talking about going to the Orange County fair and about 3 hours later we were packed and on the road. I love that our life allows spontaneous trips.

First stop after check in was the pool, of course:

Then the hot tub:

They also swam for a few hours in the morning before going to the fair.

Jack didn’t like the petting zoo too much. He was ready to leave after a quick look around but Olivia liked feeding the baby goats. The baby pot belly pigs were ADORABLE but I have no pictures of them.

Olivia liked this baby the best.

Jack saw the lemon and ran over and stuck his head through so he could get his picture taken.

He is a funny little boy.

Jack asked me just last week where we could go so he could do some rock climbing. He will probably want to try this again.

Olivia liked playing the games and came home with 3 stuffed animals because that is exactly what the Stranahan household needs; MORE Stuffed Animals.

She decided to ride the teacups right before we all collapsed.

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Accidental Beach Day

We went to Santa Monica Friday with the intention of hanging out at the pier.

But first the kids wanted to stick their feet in the ocean.

They were running around in circles of excitement.

Then they were up to their knees …

and all hope for staying even a little dry was gone.

The pier had a Red Bull promotion that was getting ready to kick off so I didn’t care that we weren’t going to be in that madness. The kids still want to go ride the rides and play games though, so next time I will suggest we do that before so much as a toe gets stuck in the ocean.

Because they got soaked …

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time slips away

I’m pretty sure I was 29 just a few days ago, then I had a couple of babies and things got all blurry for a while. And now somehow my baby boy is 7 and my girl is 9 going on 27.

That right there is freaking me out a quite a bit.

Ten years have gone by so fast I wish I’d paid more attention to the stuff that matters and less attention to the stuff that doesn’t. I wish I’d taken more pictures and videos and done a much better job at filing away every single moment. I wish I’d been better at being happy.

Ten years are going to zoom by again and I’m feeling an overwhelming need to catch every little thing. And to be better at being happy.

Mark, Set, Go!

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June 16, 2008

Last night Olivia told me that she was going to wake up early today because it’s her birthday. And true to her word, at 6AM she sticks her head into the room and says, “Hi mama!” I’m so lucky she doesn’t want breakfast first thing in the morning. She went to play in her room and I went back to sleep for another hour.

She decided she wanted to go into work with her dad so she’d been packing up Barbie dolls and their various accessories. She talked me into letting her use a new purse I got over the weekend at Target, because “it’s so big and roomy” for her dolls. She unpacked the Barbies from another purse of mine she had been using. It used to be the “perfect thing” for her to carry her stuff around in, but no more I guess. Out with the old and in with the new.

She’s good at getting my stuff. Very, very good.

We will be taking her and Jack to Chuck e. Cheese, again later today. Why does that place have to be so gross? Last time we were there it reeked of hot pee. Starting to gag just thinking about it.

Now must plan out my Ativan dosage for maximum calmness and get on treadmill.

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Worm lovin’

I’ve been composting with worms under my kitchen sink for about 2 weeks now and everything is going fine. (knock wood, as my grandmother would say … ) I had been really excited about getting worms until the day they were to arrive. That day I was kind of panicking. I was sure I was going to kill the worms right off the bat, or they were going to crawl out of the bin or the bin would stink. But they are still alive and getting fatter each time I see them, no worms have crawled out and there is no stinking. I even saw some itty bitty baby worms wiggling around in there.

While we were at the park one day I noticed that the bushes had just been topped with a fresh layer of mulch. I was thinking about how much my worms would like it and made a mental note to bring a bag with us next time so I could quietly take a little home when a Target bag blew down the sidewalk. I took that as a sign. Olivia chased after the bag and then she and Jack threw in a few handfuls of mulch. We found some decomposing leaves under a bench and scooped up some of those, too. When we got home Olivia helped me spread it over the top of the bin. We sprayed it with water to get it damp and then I gave it a gentle stir to aerate it a bit. I should probably use my gloved hands to do that instead of a wooden spoon, but I just can’t bring myself to do that yet.

The last time I was tending my worms Olivia stopped in the doorway and said, “Oh, givin’ your worms some lovin’ huh?” She didn’t see me doing a chore or as busy, she saw me giving worms love. She’s so cute I just gotta squeeze her sometimes.

She is more interested in the worms than Jack. Sometimes she will ask to put on gloves and hold them. And she’s been reading a book on bugs a lot lately. She went to play with a friend the other day and in her pink purse she carried two Barbies, a stuffed animal and an over-sized bug book.