Busy Busy Busy

Just like Chase's class at school, I've been a "busy bee" lately! Eric was out of town for about 2 weeks, so I had my first attempt at being a "single" mom of 2! It was tough. Of course, I was used to being on my own during the day, but every evening I had to face the fact that they was no relief in sight. Dinnertime and bedtime with 2 kids is not easy, and most days I didn't finish the routine until after 9pm. I'd have less than an hour to myself then it was off to bed... only to wake up a few hours later to feed Siena and start all over again. Being a mom is truly a 24 hour-a-day job!! That being said, I know how extremely fortunate I am that Eric returned at the end of only 2 weeks away and currently I only have TWO kids to take care of! Many of my friends here in Tampa are military moms and they spend much longer time periods on their own, while having to worry constantly about the safety of their spouse. Several of them have 3, 4 and up to 7 kids!! I don't know how they do it! They're my inspiration.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that when you're husband leaves town, stuff breaks. Two days after Eric left, the garbage disposal died. You never realize how much you use a garbage disposal until you don't have one anymore! Food was piling up in the garbage can and the house started to smell like a dump. But the main problem was that there was still food IN the garbage disposal, so even when you just washed dishes by hand, the water would back up and you'd end up with a stinky mess in the sink! I tried my best to fix it... Eric said, "all you have to do is use the end of the wooden spoon and un-jam it!" After breaking the wooden spoon, I decided to call for help! Fortunately we have awesome neighbors (same ones that came over to watch Chase in the middle of the night when my water broke!) and they came to my rescue. Turns out that we needed to buy a completely new disposal, so I had to go to Lowe's to fetch one, but my neighbor was kind enough to install it for me!! Problem solved.

Then, the very next night (after getting up a dozen times to tend to Chase and Siena), I was sound asleep and heard a big crash! It sounded like glass shattering and of course, my first thought was that someone had broken a window and was trying to get into our house! I immediately tried to wake Berkeley, who sleeps like a log, and we ventured into the living room... scared to death. When I saw what had caused the crash, I couldn't believe it. Our wine rack had fallen down from the kitchen ceiling!! We've had this wine rack for years and it's been with us every where we've lived. After 2.5 years of hanging securely in our kitchen, it chose that night (or morning actually) at 6am to fall! I fully expected to see 6 bottles of wine shattered on our kitchen floor, but instead they were all laying on the counter, completely intact! I have no idea how that happened. They landed on a ceramic bowl of fruit, bruised some oranges and kiwis, but otherwise caused no damage. Crazy. Me, on the other hand, I was so shaken that I couldn't go back to sleep... even though Chase chose that morning to sleep in until 7:30!

The rest of the time went pretty smoothly, except for Berkeley deciding to eat an entire box of 16 jumbo sized crayons!! I called the vet and they reassured me that he would be just fine. Three very colorful poops later, he was. Seriously, it was the most beautiful poop I've ever seen! Never thought I would say that.

I tried to take a picture of Chase and Siena every day to send to Eric so that he wouldn't think they had changed too much while they were gone (Siena especially)! Here are some of the pics that I sent him:

Siena loves her playmat! She got her foot stuck in the butterly one day and had so much fun kicking, smiling and cooing at it!


Chase's "homework" project from school. He had to decorate "himself"... he was so proud!

We are starting to have major poop-leakage issues! Anyone who has kids knows about this, I'm sure. Around this age they start having these massive diaper explosions... usually right around the time when you're about to walk out the door to go somewhere. Or when they're sitting on your lap on an airplane. Lots of fun.

I took this picture of the 3 of us on my mac, right before the Clemson game started 2 weekends ago:

Chase is such a good big brother... he's always showing toys to Siena and talking to her:
Chase was really proud of this loooooong train track:

Siena, decked out in orange before last week's Clemson game:

And lastly, I have to talk about the BEST INVENTION EVER!! I mentioned before how Chase wasn't able to sleep with the lights off in his room and he was always waking up in the middle of the night wanting to eat breakfast and start the day. Well, I finally decided to buy him a "Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight." I had been looking at it for a while, but $40 seemed like a lot to spend on a clock for a kid. But I got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. Even on days when he woke up at a "normal" time, such as 6am, we could never convince him to just hang out in his bed or ours and wait until closer to 7 to get up and eat breakfast. And he's been so curious lately about clocks... always asking about the numbers and "what time is it?" So I caved, and it was so worth it! This clock is awesome! You can set it to change colors at any time, so at 8pm every night it turns yellow (bed time!) and 7am every morning it changes from yellow to green (time to wake up)! I told Chase that there were 2 rules about having this clock:

1. When the clock is yellow, you have to stay in bed. As soon as it turns green, mommy and daddy will come get you and we can go eat breakfast!
2. With this clock in your room, you have to sleep with the big light off!

And it works!!! He's been sleeping with his light off in his room for a week now with no problems. And our mornings are SO much nicer now. I can sleep until 7am and sometimes later (Chase sleeps so much better with the lights off)! I used to hate how we started the mornings off "grumpy" because Chase would be crying for breakfast and we'd be arguing with him over how it was too early! Now we start the day happy! We walk into his room and can say, "good morning!!" and he's so excited and happy that his clock is green and it's time to wake up! BEST $40 I ever spent!!
As my blog header hints, we are "homeward bound" soon! The first part of the month of October will be spent in both of our hometowns.... Baltimore and Charleston! We are SO excited to see our families, friends, and maybe feel some fall breezes! And wear JEANS! :)