Ramblings

Does having Andrew post on the blog count as me posting for NaBloPoMo? No? Bummer.

I'm not sure which one of us is more exhausted. Last night I got four hours of sleep—the girls (yes, both of them) have been on a bit of a sleep strike—but tonight I'm aiming for more like eight. Or six. Or even five. The first few nights that Andrew was gone I think I got like two hours of sleep. I feel like a zombie of sorts.

Right now I'm definitely glad we live around family. They sure are taking good care of me!

Rachel didn't want to go to bed on Sunday night because it snowed. While we were getting ready for bed. And she wanted to get ready to go play in the snow instead. So I said no. And she acted like I had grounded her for life.

She's been coming in my bed to sleep with me in the middle of the night, every night (except for last night), which I don't really mind because, hey, the bed's half empty. BUT! She's a little disruptive.

She explained to her daddy on the phone that she just doesn't want me to be alone.

And I think she means that in the nicest way possible. She's even been encouraging me to go on dates. So that she can watch a movie.

"Mommy, are you going on a date tonight?"

"With who, sweetie? I only date your father and he's not here."

"Well, with anybody. Please!? I want to watch a movie! And when you're not home you can't say no."

As infallible as her logic is I haven't, as yet, gone on any dates.

On Monday night Rachel didn't want to go to bed—even though I let her watch "the baby Jesus" movie for Family Home Evening—so Grandpa told her that it was supposed to snow in the night, but only if she went to bed. The weatherman said: It will snow if Rachel goes to bed. So if she went to bed and fell right to sleep then in the morning when she got up there would be snow.

Unfortunately on Tuesday morning there was no snow. I took her to the window to check because it looked so bright outside I thought that it surely would have snowed but there was not a flake to be seen.

Rachel stomped on downstairs to inform her grandpa in her grumpiest voice that, "IT DIDN'T SNOW!"

He first tried to blame her temper-tantrum on me because I am the one who took her to the window to see if it had snowed (am I the only one who wants to say snown here?) but I quickly deflected the accusation saying that he was the one who promised that it would snow if she would go to bed. He ended up blaming the weatherman.

Those pesky, irresponsible, unreliable weathermen!

It's been a pretty good week, though. As happenstance would have it, there was no school last Thursday (Happy Remembrance Day/Columbus Day/Armistice Day/Whatever) so she had a make-up day on Wednesday. Next Thursday is American Thanksgiving so she'll have another day off which she will be making up tomorrow. That means she was in school for four days in a row this week—only a half day, but, hey, I'll take it.

Not that my sole aim is to get rid of her. That's not it at all. She's just an active, active child. And she needs lots of interaction. And I, alone, simply can't give her the attention she requires.

Andrew once asked me what I did with Rachel one day when she didn't have school. I couldn't stop talking. "First we played dress-up, then we danced in the living room, then we put away the dishes, then we built block towers, then we played with the lego and built the whole land of Oz, then we played with play-dough, then we coloured and did worksheets, then we had lunch, then we read stories, then we played with the dollhouse stuff, then we played with her kitchen stuff, and then..."

"It's a good thing she's in school two mornings a week!" he said.

"She needs a best friend," I said.

Today was a bit of a busy and tiring day. It ended with me deciding that we'd go on a walk to deliver the invitations for my sister-in-law Emily's bridal shower. I got all the envelopes addressed and organized in the order we needed to deliver them—the plan was that we'd walk down one side of the street dropping off invitations until we got to my parent's house, then we'd stay for dinner (thanks, Dad!) and then we'd walk home on the other side of the street to deliver some more invitations. It's not a straight shot to my parent's house but they only live a couple of blocks (maybe only one) away from my in-law's, which is where we live. So they're close. Plus, my mom and sister are invited to the bridal shower so I had to deliver an invitation, anyway. The fact that I delivered it exactly at dinnertime may or may not have been a coincidence.

I had dropped off about six invitations and was about to deliver the seventh when James, our neighbour, rode up on his bicycle and came to a screeching halt just as my hand was poised to ring the doorbell.

"Nancy!" he yelled, "Stop! Don't do it!"

"What's wrong, James?" I asked.

"Your invitations—they don't have a date on them!"

"WHAT?!" I gasped.

"They have a time, but they don't have a date."

"Oh, no!" I wailed.

"It's okay," he assured me, "How many did you deliver?"

"Only like...six."

"That's not bad."

"Tell your mom it's on December 11th," I sighed, "And thanks for stopping me from delivering them all."

I think I almost cried. Actually, I know I almost cried. I may have even actually cried.

Whatever.

So I cried.

It's been a long week.

And do you know how many people looked over the invitation before we printed it?! We had darn better do a better job of proof-reading* the wedding invitations or I will die of embarrassment—especially since I made such caustic remarks about the invitation we received in the mail about a month ago. The bride's parents were "please to announce" the marriage. They'd forgotten a 'd.' Awful.

Of course, what's a little 'd' when you can leave off the entire date?!

Luckily, since we're hand-delivering most of the invitations, I chose not to seal the envelopes. I licked about ten of them that we need to mail and thought to myself, "Self, that? Was disgusting. How about you don't seal the ones you hand deliver?" So I didn't. I'm full of good advice sometimes.

It made taking the invitations out of the envelopes so much easier. After they were out of the envelopes I wrote the date on each one of them. And then put them back in the envelopes. Which was so lame-o because Josie came over a couple of days ago and while she was here I had her stuff the envelopes with me specifically so that I didn't have to stuff all the envelopes by myself. And then? Then I end up stuffing all of them again, only this time by myself.

Also luckily, this was only the invitation for the bridal shower, not the wedding. I'll be doing that tomorrow.

*Note to self: Have James proof-read wedding invitations. That is all.