What a Long (almost as long as this post...), Fun Day!

After a night of Brendan deciding that 4:30 was wake up time (who could blame him? He passed out at 6:30 or 7 last night...10 hours of sleep is plenty! Ha!), he finally got fell back to sleep until 7:30, which truly was miraculous! What a nice night sleep for us :)

This is good, because we had a crazy day at the pool planned! We've actually never been to our new pool since it has been redone, so we thought we'd try it out. Well, the day started bad...Chris and I discovered that neither of us have swimsuits that work. They worked a couple years ago (I was pregnant last year, needing none of my swimsuits)...this drives us into diet mode hard core. Ack! So off I go to Old Navy who is having $5 suits this week! I tried on one, but it was slightly too small, so I grabbed a size bigger, a cover up, a couple suits for Chris, eleventy billion other "essentials" and went on my way. Well, I got home to discover that as always, I'm just no size. Lovely. The suit I got had leg holes the size of some potholes here in Chicago, and was ginormous in all the wrong places. Boo. So I finally searched through all of my swim collection again, finally deciding on this purple thing from college. It wasn't great, but it would have to do. Chris actually had to pin the new one I picked for him in two different locations with diaper pins. We're clearly HOT these days....... ;)

2 hours after we were planning on leaving, we left with my sister and her boyfriend, and my parents met us there. The new Rainbow Falls is actually pretty nice! I wouldn't say it's very grown up at all, definitely more kid-friendly, but hey, this is who we are now and I'm frankly very excited about that change! We brought a picnic lunch, which was soooo yummy (perhaps I should have tried my swimsuit AFTER I ate?), and went into the water, which was about super duper cold. Brendan freaked, so it was obvious this wasn't going to go well. But then I found a spot in the zero depth area where I could sit on the ground with him and he felt a little safer. Yeah, until this kid comes over and clogs all the fountain holes in the ground a few feet over, leaving one fountain to spray out of control, all over us. Cue freaked out baby and freaked out mommy. Then the kid ran away...jerk. Okay, clearly it was my fault for sitting in a spot where fountains weren't too far away, so maybe the kid wasn't so much of a jerk after all. ;) Well, we finally found a nice spot where the splashing wasn't too bad and somehow we managed to get Brendan into the water all the way. I think he liked it when he got used to it. It WORE HIM OUT, though.







After the pool, Chris, my sister, her boyfriend, and I decided to play a good game of Bags while Brendan napped. I need to practice for our 3rd of July party on Friday, where we have a psycho tournament. So the first game was Chris and I vs. Meg and Steve. Chris and I won, of course ;), and then we played a second game with Meg and I vs. Chris and Steve. Yeah, we totally won at the last minute! The score at one point was 19-8, but Meg and I came back psycho style and won a million to 19. Again, because I'm awesome like that.

Busy day, and I'm beyond exhausted, but in a good way!

The Verdict on Bubble Gum Medicine...

Me: it is not as good as I remember it.
Chris: it IS as good as he remembers it.
Brendan: stop feeding me spring vegetables with brown rice and give me more of that bubble gum medicine!

TGIF!

Hurray for Friday! And especially hurray for being 2/3 of the way done with this summer's grad program! One more week of class in July and I graduate! YAY!

Everyone is finally feeling better here, which is really good news! I have to admit that every time I gave Brendan his bubble gum medicine for his ear infections, I wanted to taste it to see if it was just as good as I remembered. I swear, that was the best part of being sick! I remember getting so excited as my mom took the glorious hot pink bottle out...it was doubly great- it made me feel better AND it was bubble gum medicine! Perhaps tomorrow after Brendan has his last dose I'll just try a drop... ;)

Other great baby things I love: those baby puffs. Especially the sweet potato kind. Total awesomeness! Oh, and my sister found these organic baby cookies at Target as well (Earth's Best). 9 cookies for 90 calories, which is totally great. I now plan to buy them for myself since Brendan is still too small.

Tonight was such a glorious night; nice and warm, but with a beautiful breeze! We took Brendan and Pepper for a walk to the park to celebrate the Cubs' victory over the White Sox. Okay, this isn't exactly true, but we (and by we, I mean Brendan and me) are super excited! Chris doesn't really want to talk about it, of course! HA! At the park Brendan found some new favorite playground equipment (see below) and Pepper only almost ate one little dog for coming too close to Brendan. This was likely because it was the only dog we saw. If there were more, he would have tried to eat more, I imagine. Please excuse the quality of the photos below; they were totally taken with our phones.





Tomorrow's plan involves going to the pool for swimming and lunch! Lots of pics to come! None of me in any swimsuit, though...eeps! I'm afraid to put any of mine on. In fact, I'll probably go out looking for one before we go. Old Navy has theirs on sale for $5-10 and I have a 25% off coupon from the glorious oldnavyweekly.com website. Oops...another little known secret! ;) Enjoy and good luck playing!

Side note: my goal is to have Brendan's first words be "Go, Cubs, Go!" So far, we're not succeeding, but he has a mean "Pbbbbbbtthhhh" with so much enthusiasm that he spits everywhere. In reality, I'm still quite sure his first words will be "Pepper, NO!" I wonder why...

I Don't Know How Single Parents Do It.

Or parents who work crazy hours! I'm certainly glad I'm a teacher!

This week I'm VanderCooking, and I only have 12 days of it to go before I'm finished and I can graduate! Woohoo! But I catch a 6:15 AM train, MECA all day, get home at 6:15 PM, make dinner, play with Brendan and feed him for about an hour, and then he goes to bed. Not long after, I follow. Lather, rinse, repeat. I pretty much hate it. Not to mention that my little man has been sick this whole week!

Poor guy went to the doctor today and it turns out he has an ear infection. It's awful. He won't lay down without screaming, but he refuses to eat without laying down. Then he will try eating but he's so congested that he has to stop every second to take a breath :( Yes, I counted! No exaggeration! When he gets frustrated enough, he screams, and I can't tell if he's screaming because he can't eat, or because the position he's in hurts his ears, or some combination of the two. I'm thinking some combination of the two. It's breaking my heart. I literally cried tonight when I couldn't make him better.

To add more chaos, Chris is sick too. He has whatever cold is going around, but he's just as miserable as Brendan, and because I'm at VanderCook all day, he's definitely been getting a lot of extra work. I think this is taking a toll on him and I feel so bad about that. I hope this passes for both of them fast. Poor guys!

For all my VanderCook buddies who have not taken their MECAs yet, I have some unsolicited advice. Unless you have no choice, please don't take the "Innovative Approches for General Music K-5." Serious waste of time. The teacher is driving me absolutely bonkers, I'm learning nothing innovative, and there's not near enough actual music involved, in my opinion. I decided this yesterday when we were drawing pictures with colored sand in total silence and she suggested this as a possible activity to do with our kids in music class.

Seriously.

And Today We Went Swimming...

in the backyard, of course. It was his first time and I think he enjoyed it. We did, at least. His turtle pool is very fun. The head sprays water and everything! Pepper, unfortunately, thinks we got him a super-sized doggie bowl and drinking fountain. =/

Just Getting Started

I'm brand new at this, so forgive me if I'm a little boring!

I'll start by admitting a problem I have. I'm addicted to online shopping. Well, all shopping, to be honest, but mostly online shopping. It's absolutely out of control! It stems from a couple things, I believe. #1- I'm obsessed with finding bargains. Did you know that jcp.com and kohls.com both have a deal of the day? Oh, yes...check it out. And #2- I love, repeat LOVE coming home to a box on my doorstep! Even when I know a package is on it's way, I rip it open like I'm 5-years-old on Christmas morning! Some latest finds: thirstiesbaby.com has an outlet store. I'm a little hesitant to share this secret to other cloth-diapering mommies because selection is so small (or non-existent like it is right now...) and it all goes so fast and I selfishly don't want to lose out, but I know we're all looking for deals in this economy and their diaper covers are usually less than $8 each. A STEAL! I just bought 4 last week. Awesome. I'm totally into hearing about other sites where you find deals, so if you have some, keep me in the loop! I'll share others I find as I continue my online shopping habit.

In other news, our little monster has TEETH! The first one sprouted one day, and by the next day we had tooth #2. It's time for steak! Or not. But we are trying puffs this week. We bought 4 flavors, and so far, the sweet potato is for sure his favorite. It's weird, though. He loves them now and will eat them, but we have to put them directly into his mouth. We put them on his high chair try, he demonstrates a fantastic pincer grasp, and then throws them on the floor. Pepper has found his new best friend. So he won't put the food in his mouth, but he's currently on the floor scootching his way off the blanket to munch on some carpet fibers. Yum.

My next goal for this blog is to figure out how to post pictures and videos. It doesn't look too terribly complicated. We'll see about this!