Chocolate, I'm Starting Early Today

Being a mother without chocolate would surely be the end of me. I seriously don't know how some people do it. To me, you're either crazy or amazing...or both.

Note to self: Grad school is hard. Yes, I know I'm not the one slaving away in front of flasks and hazardous material...the poor hubster...but I think that in some ways I might happen to be more explosive than a barrel of whatever in the lab.

Patience...sigh...patience. I prayed for that once. It laughs at me on a daily basis. As I was lying in bed last night at 11 'o clock wondering when Brian would finally come home from work, I realized that this life I'm in doesn't actually last forever. Can we get three cheers, please??? Phew. It's hard for me to see ahead most off the time, and maybe that was a good thing. I feel antsy to be done with school (yes, I count myself in school with Brian because I believe wife's survive grad,med,law...schools with their husbands). I'm excited for the day where family time doesn't begin at 6 and end at 7 when Brian goes back to work. I'm excited to not be renting. Sigh. Decorating however I want? Yes, please! I'm excited to have our income start with a higher number so we can have more wiggle room. Soon. All in good time, right. We're on the last leg of our race ...which is usually where I would fall on the ground dying and gasping for breath. We'll make it.

Second, I'm getting a little terrified of having 2 children. What? 2? When did this baby thing happen? 10 weeks left? What? No, I can't play with Claire and console a colicky baby. It makes me feel guilty. One was so easy. You hold it all the time. Sleep during their naps. Spend every possible moment making them comfortable. Now, I need to grow some extra arms to have two of them.

Seriously though...back to the chocolate. It's possible. Grad school does end and mothers survive multiple children. Just one snack a day is how I'm going to be living for a while. Bring on the snicker doodles and sweet mint chocolate chip ice cream.

It Could Have Been Worse...

Our computer crashed. Sad day. We don't have an external hard drive, yes, we know....dumb. We'll have one some day when we can afford one. We lost our pictures. I tried for weeks to get them burned onto a disk because I just knew something was going very wrong and I wanted copies of everything.

Despite all of that, I feel very blessed. I just developed everything right before Thanksgiving, so we do have hard copies. We also put them all on a flash drive and transferred them to Brian's parent's computer, so we'll have them send them back to us. I have a lot of them on Shutterfly where I can develop them any time I want. The only thing I really really lost was the first part of December. I kept a whole bunch on our camera because of that "everything is going to be lost" feeling. I think that it's a major blessing. Thank goodness we spread them all over the place!

Now, hopefully said computer doesn't have too much wrong with it, or else I will have pictureless blogs for a while and I will not blog often because it takes so much time on the iPad. We may have to get a new computer, so we'll be saving up for that.

Also, I just have to say that Pedialyte is my new best friend. Claire has been sick....but we don't know with what. A virus I guess. I thought it was just teething because she was so ornery and clingy, but then she started to get VERY lethargic. She hadn't eaten anything but a few crackers a day for 3 days and therefore had major bowel problems. After talking to the nurse, a trip to the store, and 6 oz. of Pedialyte, we played with stackable blocks and she laughed and screamed...a happy thing. Thank goodness. I missed my happy little monster.

Envelope System. Haha. Ever heard of it. That's what we're on these days. We've really tried to stick to a budget, but it's so hard with so little money and the ease of just swiping that card. So, we're getting back on track and doing cash in envelops. Saving every receipt. It could be worse. It's actually kind of a game to me and it's been fun to see how we've been doing. First week down. :) We each have $15 for the month to do with whatever we want. I've found that I'm a fat kid at heart. I want doughnuts, icee's, leftover holiday candy on sale...you name it. However, I am not willing to let my $15 be spent on something so lame. See...this is good for me.

That's all. We are very blessed. Plus, who can deny it...April weather in January was marvelous! Now Claire and I get to go play in the snow today.

Spoiled

I just have to reiterate how spoiled I feel right now. After using my Kindle I want to read every minute Claire is sleeping. I started Sherlock Holmes and can't get enough of it already. I want to buy every book that is already on my shelf, get rid of them bulky books and clean house! I want to get all the books that I've always thought about reading and the books that I've already read! If you have any good book suggestions, PLEASE send them my way because I will be reading up a storm over here!!!

I also just got back from Claire and my first bike ride together. She was getting impatient and mad at me while I was attaching the bike trailer to my bike. She screamed while I was putting her helmet on and continued to make a 2 year old scene as I buckled her in. As soon as I started to pedal, her screaming turned into "Oh's" and she loved it! When I got back to the house she said, "more" and so we did. We went through another neighborhood until Claire started falling asleep. Her head was bobbing into the mesh wall bobbing all around. She was so happy though.

I feel completely spoiled rotten and do I know that I have been. I love reading and feeling satisfied with a good book. I also love that riding my bike is helping with my DREADFUL charlie horses with this second pregnancy. I love that my mom is converted to fun make-up (and yes, we DID have fun). We also had SO MUCH FUN playing games with my family this Christmas that it's all Brian has been talking about. Thanks to my brothers who were wonderful participants in our board game hobby. It was a blast! Even though I'm excited to clean up World War III that has happened in my house (nesting is in full swing), the holidays really do go by too quickly.

Sigh. It's been a wonderful day.