The Weekend

As a general rule, I cherish my weekends. I relish every second, bask in each moment.

This weekend, however, has not been one of my finest.

I've been trying to write this blog post for hours, but everything that comes to mind is negative - Isabel was difficult this weekend, my house is a complete disaster, I'm entering my third trimester and therefore am tired of being pregnant already, I watched a sad movie, and the dinner I made kinda sucked.

I need a vacation, or at least 8 hours of sleep.

Here's hoping Isabel sleeps all night and I wake up with a more sunny disposition.



*ps. I drew this this week. I know it's lovely, but please don't use it for anything without permission. I'm nice and I'll probably say yes, but it's my art, so be courteous. Kthxbai.

Reflection... Or, Things I Learned This Week

Being Sunday, I think it is a great time to look back on the past week and see what happened and what I learned this week. So, here it goes:

1. Sometimes half weeks can seem extremely long.

2. I can get Isabel and I ready really fast when I sleep through my alarm for 45 minutes.

3. This is not new information, but my husband, Drew, is an exceptionally good cook. Had I thought of this more, I would have refused to cook a long time ago, haha. He made egg drop soup this week that was awesome, and the best steak I have ever had today for lunch.

4. Isabel is so smart. This, also, is not new information, but it always shocks me. This week, I taught Isabel how to play Ring Around the Rosie. She adored it and wanted to play over and over and over again. We would walk in a circle, then when we got to "all fall down," she would yank my hands down, then immediately pull them back up so that I would get up and do it all over again. Of course, she never fell down and got back up, so she had a lot more energy at the end than I did, haha.

5. Isabel is rediscovering how much she adores the outdoors. We went to three different parks and the zoo this week and she had an absolute blast. Today, after 45 minutes of swinging, sliding, walking around the duck pond and even more swinging, the sweet girl cried and cried when we had to go, even though she was shivering and it was getting dark. I think she'd live outside if we would let her eat dirt and rocks, haha.

6. I'm not a huge fan of going out to eat with Isabel in tow, since usually I do a lot of baby wrangling and not a lot of enjoying my meal. However, going out to eat at a location that offers Mac and cheese makes the whole situation much more enjoyable :)

7. 25 weeks pregnant is SOOOOO much better the second time around!

8. Apparently, my childhood that I thought was pretty awesome was not as awesome as I thought because I never had a huge Lego set.

9. Drew is absolutely adorable huddled over a giant pile of legos, building the Slave 1 and humming Star Wars themes.

10. Again, not something new, but re-remembering is always good - I love my church and the people in it and I am proud to be a member of such a strong body of Christ.


And a video for good measure - one of mine and Isabel's favorite things to do is animal sounds. Isabel is really good at puppy dog sounds, but we have been working on others lately. Her new favorite is an Elephant. I love how she raises her arm as if it were the elephant's trunk while she makes the sound. Here's the video:

Isabel's Elephant Video

Thoughts I Had While Cleaning

1. I'm sure that there are hovels in third world countries with dirt floors that have cleaner kitchen floors than I did until about 20 minutes ago.

2. Cleaning - really deep cleaning - is difficult while pregnant. So many of the cleaners have harsh chemicals and odors that I am sure I shouldn't be breathing, I get tired really easily, and I get dizzy when I get tired or dehydrated.

3. My house had gotten pretty bad - like, bad to the extent that I had to clean one thing to be able to clean the next, and sometimes it was pretty circular.

4. There are SO many poems about being a mom and having a dirty house.

5. I love that my sweet husband thanks me for making our house look nice, but at the same time, it makes me feel awful that this isn't the natural state of things.

6. Remember dish pan hands? Well, I have mop bucket hands. Ew.

7. I love that in a neighborhood with a mostly Hispanic population, we use cleaners with such names as Fabuloso. And it smells pretty darn fabuloso.

8. It's both sad and nice at the same time that an event at my house is one of the main ways to motivate me to clean. Honey, our house is looking kind of awful, let's have people over!

9. I clean well under pressure.

10. Wet, freshly mopped floors are a magnet to kitty paws.

11. I think alot of random things while cleaning my kitchen.

12. I threw away coupons in my kitchen that expired in early July. Wonder how long that means they had been there.

13. I need to tighten the screw in the vent cover in the den. From where I am laying, it looks like it's going to fall out of the ceiling. On one side at least, haha.

14. I don't even want to know what my AC filter looks like after the past 2 weeks.

15. One of my favorite lines from an awful country song - "I need a vacation from my life, me and my husband we need a wife."