Summerizing

Our local weatherman says that we’ve seen the end of our freezes and frosts for this year and so I feel more confident about getting the household ready for summer. We’ve done a little planting and yard work—four tomato plants in 5 gallon buckets, and one garden box filled with tomatoes, peppers and garlic. I think I’m going to devote the other garden box to pole beans and do that teepee idea with them, making a little fort for the girls (and neighborhood cats.) I know I’m really late for planting beans…. But hopefully they won’t mind the heat and will survive. And in the other garden plot, I don’t know what we’ll do.  I threw some melons back there last year so maybe if I weed it out we’ll get some melons growing back. Who knows.

Other than that, we’ve been mostly making plans for our yards and mulching the front—but we ran out of mulch, so the front of our house looks really lousy still and will until we get more, which we hope to do soon.  It’s funny—we kind of were hoping so much to not be living here this summer that we actually started planning our lives around not being here… hence the late start on the garden. So we have a little catching up to do, but I have confidence that by Memorial Day our yard will be looking swell.

On the inside I’ve been packing away winter clothes and maternity clothes. If you are ever in a pinch for clothing storage and happen to have some of those giant paper lawn bags on hand, they work beautifully for storing clothes!  They are heavy-duty so they won’t rip like regular paper bags, they are HUGE so they hold an entire seasons worth of kids clothes and as long as you mind that dotted line that says plainly “Do Not Fill Above This Line” they are manageable once filled too!  I was able to haul one all the way from the upstairs bedroom clear to the Back Room!  (The second one I ignored that important dotted line and I ended up having to ask Martin to take it downstairs for me. SO, MIND THE LINE.)

Does it sound like I’m nesting?

I love nesting. I LOVE IT. After many weeks of not having the energy to do anything but sit in a chair and knit (even though I DID more than that, that’s all I felt like I wanted to do) I suddenly this week am feeling this blissful end-of-pregnancy energy. The only downside is that with the energy comes a sense of URGENCY. I look at my house and I see so much that needs to be done before we can bring a baby home. Of course, I know this isn’t true—the baby will fit right in whenever it arrives. But still.  I’m getting all sorts of really important household chores done with all this crazy nesty stuff—like lint rolling my rugs and scouring the entire outside of my oven. It’s incredible. And then there’s the more normal (and truly more important) stuff like organizing the diapers, rearranging the bedroom to make us all fit, finding all the tiny baby clothes that I know are in a place I thought was smart and accessible at the time of putting them there, but now are buried under who-knows-how-much stuff in who-knows-which room.

And aside from all the work getting done, showing that this third pregnancy is nearing it’s end, the baby suddenly dropped on Tuesday afternoon.  It was very sudden.  And with this little development (especially paired with my new energy level) I wouldn’t mind being pregnant for a few more months!  My clothes fit! I can breathe! And I feel cuter than I have through this entire pregnancy.

 This is not the exact picture I posted on facebook... for one thing, it's not Instagrammed. But as I explained on there, I find it very hard to take my own picture in a mirror. My grandmother used to find all the photographs with her in them and cut out her face. I would totally do that if I knew how to use photoshop! I would gladly leave empty holes in my photographs where my face ought to be.

Ok, on to the other things going on in our lives lately. My nieces and nephew had an open house last weekend for their homeschooling co-op. We were late (if you can imagine that) because no one wanted to get dressed (shocker) and then we realized only after we were over on campus (horrible place) that we would have really been better off walking to this thing or at least taking the trolley over. But, it was too late by that time and we eventually got there and saw the very important people, one of whom is pictured here:

 Anja and her cousin, Bella, being awesome while Greta looks uncomfortable and like she doesn't really want to admit that she knows them. ("Why was I asked to be in this picture with these strangers? I've never seen these nutjobs before in my life! I swear!")

Afterward we found this really, really, really cool stick sculpture that I didn't know existed. It is SO FUN.  It's like a house made of sticks, except it's more like a maze with little rooms. We played in for a really long time, we all loved it.

 Here is my little family looking out one of the windows.

My other niece (Bella's big sister) made her First Communion this past weekend and it was a lovely day, but I forgot to put the picture of it on here that I meant to. She looked so pretty!

Oh, and I advertised on Instagram that there would be a story here explaining what the girls and I did TODAY.  Today we went to Toys "R" Us to ride a mechanical Garfield.

So, a looooooooong time ago, we went there to get somebody a birthday present and on the way out the girls wanted to ride this mechanical Garfield thing, so of course I let them. Anja had her ride and she thought it was great, and then it was Greta's turn and the blasted thing ate ALL my money and kept saying (very loudly and in a British accent) "Another Coin, Please. Another Coin, Please" every three seconds. Greta, of course, was upset and I was upset because such a simple thing as a mechanical ridey thing should NOT leave little toddlers devastated.  So, ever since then she's been talking about it and every once in awhile she mentions that we should go back and see if it's fixed. (By the way, she thinks it's a tiger and yells at me whenever I accidentally call it a cat... which is always, since it IS a cat. A very famous cat, really, but Greta has no idea.) Well, anyway, today we finally had the car on a day she remembered this broken ridey tiger, and suggested we go and see if it had been fixed yet. Great idea! We immediately scrounged up many quarters and headed out for Toys "R" Us. Only to find that the Garfield ride wasn't there anymore. It had been replaced by a car with a big mouse in it, wearing a sign that read "Out Of Order." Even that was okay, because there was still this big train that could be ridden, so the girls got in and I put in the quarters, which immediately plinked out again. It wouldn't take my money. They were BOTH BROKEN.

Toys "R" Us FAIL.

Luckily, I know that there is a ridey carousel thing in our mall that the girls rode once last fall and loved. So we went there. But we went in the wrong door (because I hate the mall and never go there) so the first thing we came to was a collection of ridey toys that were not the carousel, but more like the ones at the crappy toystore. Hop in girls! Ready... Set... OH WAIT, IT'S BROKEN AND NOW IT'S EATEN THREE OF MY QUARTERS!

And of course, it was Greta's that wasn't working. I slipped her into Anja's choice ride, which WAS working (thank goodness) and everyone was happy. Then we headed off to find the carousel.

And this is where our trip greatly improved. There are three different vehicles on this carousel and I just happened to have two dollar bills in my purse and we had one dollar left of quarters so we were able to ride the carousel THREE TIMES, so each girl got a ride on each vehicle! Everyone was happy and once we were out of money we went to the indoor play area which is actually pretty great because it's designed for pretty little kids and it's just a place to climb and slide, which is awesome. Nothing is high enough that a fall would do any damage, everything is really spread out but contained, so there's plenty of room for everyone, and climbing and sliding are my girls' favorite things to do, so they were extremely happy to be at this place. I tried to pretend we weren't in the mall (where I was quickly realizing that I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind in the fashion world. Like a decade or more. Yikes) and I tried harder to pretend that the other three parents there were not all glued to their smartphone screens while their kids were being so cute and funny.

 Cute and funny, like mine! I'm so glad it's summer.