fun. crazy. life.

So as a random act of kindness towards my exhausted and busy husband, I offered to pack his suitcase for his business trip. Now, usually his office is “business casual” but lately with all this traveling, he is finding himself needing to dress up more often. So when I went to pack, I was appalled by his serious lack of nice clothes. Seriously - he has like two nice shirts and about 4 ties. None of which really match the aforementioned shirts. So I realized I needed to go shopping. Darn.
After a trip to the outlet mall (tee hee hee) I had major success. It was divine intervention, I tell you. J Crew and Banana Republic were both having sales. On ties and dress shirts. Like 50% off on sale. On the day I happened to be there. I got him 5 shirts, 6 ties and 2 pairs of pants. Of which he will probably like maybe half. (Husband is very picky about clothes. Ask anyone who has bought him a Christmas present.)
Boy is he going to be surprised when he gets home and - not only does he have a new work wardrobe - but the bathroom that was white when he left now looks like this:
(Sorry so fuzzy - I couldn’t use the flash!)
I’m just full of surprises! Don’t you wish you were married to me?

If I had to describe last week in a word it would be “Sucked.”

This week - much better. No sick kids, no waterfalls in the mudroom… This week, my kids were healthy and happy. I’ve had several hot fudge sundaes. I actually had several nights of good sleep (which is happening less and less, due to this baby who never sleeps, preferring to perform great gymnastic feats that keep me awake all night. This does not bode well for when he is actually born). And I finally decided what color to paint the bathroom and will be painting said bathroom this weekend.
Oh, and my husband got a raise yesterday. Woo-HOO!  He was supposed to get his yearly review/raise in August. As in August 2007. And they just now got around to giving it to him, which is very nice of them. They must have been so busy counting their billions of dollars in earnings that they failed notice that they forgot to give their puny employees their raises. Completely understandable. But, moving on, this also means his next paycheck will include six-months of back pay to make up the difference. Which will greatly help me forgive them for leaving us hanging for 6 months.
This will enable me to pursue my new obsession: nesting. I am out. of. control. I have an uncontrollable urge to re-paint and redecorate our entire house. It is taking great restraint to control myself. I am limiting myself to the rooms that are not done (our bedroom and bath, family room and - of course - the baby’s room) but I would seriously love to do more. I’ve been to Home Depot so often they probably see me waddling through the parking lot and say “Here comes that pregnant lady who steals all of the paint samples again.”
I’ll post pictures as I finish projects, since I am very proud of myself. Husband is probably very glad that he is traveling a ton this month. Not only does he not have to listen to me blab on and on and on about different shades of tan, but he comes home and *poof!* another room is done! All he has to do is the heavy lifting and things with the drill. Because I’m not allowed to make holes in the walls. Because I tend to make too many holes. Ahem.

Thank you for all of your encouraging words and wishes yesterday! Yes, I did cry and yes, I think it did help :-) 

Grace and I are feeling much better today - her fever is gone and she seems to be fine. Now its just a matter of getting rid of all the energy she stored up while she was sick, since she is now positively bouncing off the walls. And I finally had a decent nights sleep last night, so the world is looking rosy. Amazing how sleep can do that for a mom.

We also figured out why the stupid washing machine overflowed. It was a problem with the garbage disposal. I bet that was totally obvious to all of you, but it took us as semi-new homeowners by surprise. Because naturally when your washing machine has a problem, you should immediately check the garbage disposal. I don’t know why we didn’t see that problem right away. If it had been any more obvious, it would have hit us on the head. Gah! 
Sarcasm aside, problem solved. I meant to take some pictures of the chaos to entertain you all with but I forgot. What with the gallons of water gushing all over the place and you do not even want to know what gushed out during the fixing of the garbage disposal.  Lets just say I am doing a lot of cleaning today and Husband and I had to change our clothes.
There are definate benefits to being married to an engineer who is able to fix stuff.

Gracie and I are both sick Poor thing crawled into our bed at 2:30am and was positively on fire she was so warm… and of course when I went to get her some medicine I discovered that ALL of our kid Tylenol and Advil was waaayyy expired.  So - despite being sick - we are went to the store to restock our medicine container, which cost approximately $300, since just about everything else in there was expired too.

Then the washing machine overflowed. As in a waterfall flowing down the wall and all over the floor.   Did you ever wonder how much water is in a washing machine? Approximately as much water as your average dolphin tank. Holy moly. Water. Everywhere. And now we have the big mystery. How on earth did it happen?

I’m really hoping that today will take an upturn. Quite soon. Before I cry.

Grace woke up from her nap covered in little red bumps. All over her body, including her face. My kids have zero allergies, I have zero allergies, so you can imagine my reaction: Total. Freak. Out.

Our wonderfully calm doctor, with her soothing English accent, says they are probably hives, but if they are worse by tomorrow or if she has any more symptoms, I should bring her in to the office tomorrow morning.

So I’m sitting here waiting for Husband to come home. Trying to stay calm, when I am convinced that something is wrong with my baby girl. (Grace, for the record, is sitting calmly watching Sesame Street, completely oblivious to the distress she is causing me.) To top it all off, we are experiencing some sort of sewage back-up in the drain in our driveway, so our driveway is littered with used toilet paper. Nice.

This looks like the start to a relaxing weekend.

update: She does NOT have hives. We gave her Benadryl, which turned her into an air molecule, bouncing around the house, but did nothing for the spots. Which are spreading all over. Including her fingers, toes and ears. She isn’t uncomfortable and she doesn’t have a fever, so we decided not to go to the ER, but we’ll wait for tomorrow morning and go to the doctor’s office first thing. Still freaking out.

Sat morning update: Spots are almost gone and she is fine. No one has any clue what caused the spots, but she’s apparently okay. She’s not acting the least bit sick or uncomfortable and looks much more normal now that she doesn’t have spots all over her face. Husband and I both woke up this morning and ran straight in to see her! So, I’m not freaking out anymore… well, anymore than usual

My children, despite being sweet, adorable little girls having a combined weight of about 50 pounds, are capable of amazing feats of destruction. Every wall in their room has a section that looks like this:

See the holes in the wall?  I don’t think I’ve ever made a hole in the wall. Maybe when I was moving furniture or something, but I don’t think they’ve been moving furniture. If they are, they are very quiet about it.  Maybe they are! But I really have no idea how they are doing this to the walls. Nevermind the patches of dirt and smudges. One section by the lightswitch  has blue dribbles going down it. (???) And next to Gracie’s bed is a perfect dirt footprint.
What on earth are they doing when they should be sleeping? We’ve only lived here less than 2 years. I’m going to have to re-drywall the house before we move out at this rate.