Eating, With the Possibility of Running

So I ran three miles today, but I ate three candy bars, too. I'm going to say I broke even. :) 

I took the girls to Gaylord to check out a teacher supply store. I'm not a teacher, but I wanted to find a pocket chart for Berit to encourage her to want to eat more fruits and vegetables. It was my first time in a teacher supply store, and I could have bought everything in the place. Holy moly -- fun learning games, stickers, charts, organization -- I wanted to just live there. And to boot, it was on the second floor of a book store. Hello, heaven. Both stores even had kid areas, so I was free to browse while Berit played. Except for the time when I checked on her and she was laying on the ground, watching a mom actually interact with her child, she did perfectly. On the way home, however, both she and Marta were overtired, a little hungry and fed up with being in the car. They screamed the entire way home, and I ate three entire candy bars (gifts for others from the book store). It was a scene straight from a Weight Watchers ad. Emotional eating? Sign me up.

I have the option to run a 5K this weekend, and I'm really unsure about it. I know 3.1 miles isn't much, but I am such a lame (though well-intentioned) runner right now. My friend Jane suggested I walk a mile, run a mile to get my time up, and it seems to be helping. Since I don't have much time to be away (this could be a whole other post in itself), I'm only doing 3 miles total, so I'm pretty much running 1 1/2 miles and walking 1 1/2 miles. Still, progress. 

I'm considering writing and trying to submit to magazines a piece about having more children... or not. We love having two and are open to more, but we find ourselves in this awkward spot where we really, really want to have experiences with our kids and not be in constant baby mode. There are so many things to consider when you're open to new life in your family but not quite sure if you want to shoot for it, so to speak. So anyway, maybe I'll blog the article and see if it's catchy enough for my friends before trying to get someone to buy and print it. I'd love to know if anyone else is in this position, or if it's just me, overthinking something that's relatively out of my control. Ah, another reason to strive for the emotional eating sugar buzz.

Girls Being Goofy

Here are a couple gems from yesterday. Berit, as usual, was sporting some sort of "look," and she informed me that she was done smiling for pictures. So I tested her, and here's what I got. (Notice the lips tucked in.) After I took the pic, she said, "See Mommy? I didn't smile." Miss Thang indeed.

A few more funny things:

After finding both sets of our car keys she said, "Oh, I can't wait until I can drive."

After driving by a statue of Mary, she said: "Hey Mary. You're such a sweetie pie."

At church, when all was quiet and worshipful, in front of the large Mary statue with her arms outstretched: "Look, Mary's playing air guitar."

Marta has been doing peekaboo with her blankie, something she discovered by herself and revels in. When she pulls the blankie down her smile is gigantic. She has also started saying her version of "Hiiiiiiiiii!!!" when we get her up from her nap, and has recently been saying "Hi-Da-Da, Hi-Da-Da." Who knows if it means anything, but when she eats she definitely says "Num-num." Does that count as a first word?

Berit's Gone for the Night

All is quiet now in the Doublestein House. Trevor's of course at work, Marta's asleep (as is Mosey), and Berit is at Trevor's parents' house. I have SUCH a hard time saying goodbye when she goes to stay with them. It's not even for the weekend, it's only overnight, but as she pulls away in someone else's car, head looking out the window at me and a goofy smile on her face, because she's excited to be doing something a little different, I always almost say, "WAIT! You're staying right here." It's not that I don't l-o-v-e the time to myself (meaning, time to clean the house and take care of the rest of the family who didn't leave). I appreciate not having a no-napper at my heels asking for help but not wanting actual help, putting greasy, dirty fingers into my mouth, climbing on me, asking me to hold her, hold her dolls, hold her blanka, standing at my knees while I pee, etc. etc. etc. I've been working on my newsletter project since Marta went to sleep, and I've actually accomplished things, instead of sitting down to do it and having to kiss a boo-boo, sitting down then having to get a drink, sitting down then having to pull a stuck toy out, again etc. etc. etc. But I feel like every single day I put her off in favor of the baby, because I assume she's more mature and less needy than she is. She's not baby-ish anymore, and so I expect her to understand when I have to nurse Marta (in the dark, in the same chair, with her sound on, and a blankie). She shouldn't have to sit out in the living room alone while I do this. I hate it. 

So when someone takes her for an hour or overnight, I get really jealous that they get quality time with her. It's not that I don't love being with Marta, too. I just long for my big girl, so that I even miss her when she's right next to me. Touching my knees. While I pee.

From the Mouth of B

Last night when I was leaving Berit's room, she said to me, "Love ya, Babe."

(This is a pic of her wearing Marta's bathing suit as a front pack, a trick her cousin Annie taught her.)

Speaking of tricks, Marta has started patting my back when I pick her up to burp her -- adorable to the max -- and cracking up when I get her out of her crib after bed/naps. She has also started wrinkling her nose and snorting really fast, over and over, until I do it back and then she laughs and laughs.

Berit has decided that a boo-boo she acquired last weekend (WHICH HAS SINCE HEALED COMPLETELY) is still in need of special treatment in the bathtub. While it is forgotten for the entire day, once we hit the tub she must stand during her bath with her foot on the edge of the tub, keeping her toe (the location of the injury) out of the line of any splashes, soap or cleanliness. Oh, she also screams during her whole bath, "NOT MY TOE! NOT MY TOE!"

She has a minor runny nose and is up in bed whining for me, so I should probably get ready for a night dedicated to wiping her nose for her since she won't do it herself.

Still, the "Love ya, Babe," makes up for all of this drama. I'm requesting that she say it over and over in the hope it sticks in her mind and she says it in lots of cute situations. Preferably in public.

A Quick Walk In and Out of the Park

Took the kids to a new park today in Alanson, and as you can see, Marta was thrilled. :) The whole park thing is making me rethink my mettle as a mom, because I talk it up to Berit all morning to get her moving, then when we get there all I want to do is leave. Maybe it'll be more interesting to me once she actually plays on her own or with a group of kids, but the whole time it's her begging me to push her on the swings (Marta despises sitting in the front pack while I do this) or watch her hang from the bars above the slides, and never actually going down the slides. Today I showed off my great parenting skills by refusing to push her on the swing after her first round of swinging and forcing her to try things like CLIMBING and BOUNCING and GOING DOWN SLIDES. She cried and I told her to suck it up. Is it wrong to tell your 2 1/2 year old to suck it up? 

So then I was desperate to leave after a half-hour, but she protested and I ended up promising her ice cream if we could just go already. It occurs to me that she's building brain cells and personal character right now that she'll use the rest of her life, so maybe I should devote more time to expanding her horizons and less time watching the clock, wishing it were bedtime. If any moms out there have clever play games their toddlers love, please pass them on. The best I've done lately is sidewalk chalk. Every day. 

But Armed and Dangerous

Just in case any creeps happen to be reading my blog and decide to use the below info to their, ah, advantage, I'd like to note that we have a crazy good alarm that I've jacked up to go off if we so much as sneeze, a hound dog who's been cooped up with no real exercise in days and who barks madly if we so much as sneeze, a cop living next door who suffers from insomnia, a sheriff's deputy across the street, and I'm a really good shot. Just needed to mention that.

Home Alone

The long weekend is halfway over, and I'm all the way over it. We did have fun at Emma's 2nd birthday today, but the hours following were long, long, long, with no adult conversation in sight. Berit didn't have a nap today (I wrote that like it's strange, but we know the truth), so I couldn't leave the house after "quiet time" because then she'd fall asleep in the car and go to bed at some ridiculously late time. So she went down at 7 p.m. and will surely be up at 6 a.m. 

In completely unrelated Berit news, today she told me, "I'm not a raisin girl, Mom. I'm a Berit Hayes Doublestein." (Note that I did not ask if she was a raisin girl, nor did I offer her raisins before said comment.)

In case you were wondering, here's how my brain is working after two days alone: After Berit went to sleep, I took Marta out to swing for a little while, hoping the cool air might lull her into an early bedtime as well. While I was pondering whether or not Berit could sense the swing moving with someone else in it even while she slept, the birds around my house -- not in just one tree, in all the trees, all around my house -- started flipping out. Screeching, flying in varying directions, lots of wings batting and freaking me out. This lasted for a long, long time, and may very well be going on still, but I'm not opening the doors to check because they're all properly booby trapped in case someone tries to break in while I'm home alone. Anyway, the whole birds thing made me fairly certain there was some sort of wild animal on the loose outside, and I've spent the past few hours thinking about how I would save both girls and possibly the dog if a puma broke down a door or leapt through a window in my house. 

I also concocted a little dessert made from sugar, flour, vanilla, butter, cocoa and peanuts -- essentially brownie mix minus eggs plus peanuts -- and ate it while I watched The Soup and folded mountains of laundry. 

Trevor, on the other hand, slept in until NOON, went on a walking trip on the south side of Chicago hoping to check out Soldier Field and possibly touch the grass upon which his beloved Chicago Bears play. In true Trevor Luck, he stumbled upon Family Day, and got to watch the Bears play, mingle and entertain the crowd while he took pictures from his iPhone and emailed them to me. I'm putting them all in a box marked "Reasons Lisa Gets to Visit a Spa for a Week When She's Not Pregnant or Nursing."