Amber is Snoring

Where to begin? I haven't blogged all week, and the days are running together. I may as well talk about the picture, then start with today, and fill in the other happenings at random, chronology isn't really integral to the plot. There really is no plot anyway.

So this is a train track I built this week. I had to take a picture of it because I was so proud of myself. Darren always makes fun of me, because I may be a lot of things, but an engineer is not one of them. Whenever I make a train track, there is inevitably some flaw, like a loop that the train can't get off of once it gets on, or some mess like that. The big blue thing in the center is a waterfall play set that Jacob got for his birthday. It is pretty steep, so if there are more than like two cars behind the engine, it flies down the incline, crashes and derails at the bottom. That's nothing to do with my engineering, that's the toy company's fault. The way the play set works, it's just a loop, the train goes up the loops to the top of the waterfall and down, and then at the bottom goes back up again. I have tried to include it in larger track schemes in the past, but the way I integrated it and added tracks, if a train took a certain turn it would end up going the wrong way on the waterfall part of the tracks, and go up the waterfall. Since its so steep, the trains get about halfway up and then slide back down, and then goes halfway back up again and falls back down, until one of the kids either pushes it up by hand, or hurls it across the room. This time I managed to set it up so that any direction the train came from, the that lead to the waterfall only led in the right direction! The train had to start in the right direction in the first place for that to work, but it did. I didn't tell the kids the train had to face a certain way at first, but they set them up that way. The track lasted probably a day, I was surprised it survived that long. I had to replace a segment of track here and there that came disconnected, but they didn't demolish it. The pieces of track started to come apart really frequently though, and it was never a huge thing that they couldn't easily have fixed without my help, but they were playing helpless, so eventually I got tired of it and stopped coming to the rescue. They played on the rest of the track that was still together, which was whittling down smaller and smaller, since I stopped fixing it and they wouldn't do it for themselves, until it was ultimately decimated.

This morning, Olivia woke me up, shrieking, crying, screaming bloody murder, around 5:30. Last week she was getting up at around 6:30, still too early, but at least I had another hour. Then it was her missing parents that had caused the fits of hysteria, which, though trying, were understandable and to be expected. This morning, however, I don't think she knew or cared that Mommy and Daddy weren't home. Jeremy, her toy plane, was lost, and it was the absolute end of the world. I have experienced her going out of her mind over not being able to find a toy (more often than not, it's sitting right next to her or behind her, or at least hidden in plain sight somewhere...) but this was by far the worst meltdown to date! Maybe it was just that it was so early and I was still 3/4's asleep, but it was really bad.

When we dropped Olivia off, Jacob wanted to go to Toys "R" Us. We drop Olivia off at 9 and Toys "R" Us doesn't open til 10. I said we should go to Target because it wasn't open yet, but he was insistent that we just go straight to the toy store and just wait for them to open. I was just like whatever, I had my book along, so I was fine just sitting there in the parking lot reading. I figured it was easier than wandering Target when we didn't need to buy anything, or dragging him through the mall. So I read and he was playing with Thomas stickers and bouncing off the walls. When ten rolled around we went in and he played with the train set, and when I was sick of standing there I pried him away and we wandered around looking at everything.

I have a lot of G.I. Joe's back home. I'm not really sure how it came about, I guess I slur or something and it sounds like "Jigh" instead of "Gee, Aye," so now my mom and I always say Jigh Joe. By the time I started playing with G.I. Joe's I was a teenager or at least pre-teen so I could speak by then. Although I allegedly mumble, and my dad used to call me mush mouth sometimes. Which brings me to a tangent, a story I told my mom before I moved down here to start my manny position. When Olivia gets excited, or upset, or sometimes just for no mood reason she just talks a mile a minute and it just sounds like unintelligible gibberish. I told Mom that with me watching her, Olivia would never learn to speak and my speech would just degenerate and we would only be able to communicate with one another. Haha. When we got to that section, Jacob asked who's that, so I told him it was G.I. Joe. (I made sure that I told him the correct pronunciation, haha.) But he started calling them "Joe-Joe". So I texted Mom to tell her about that since it was funny.

I decided to make breakfast for dinner. I was making eggs, but then I remembered that we need a vegetable, and all there was in the freezer was peas, mixed vegetables, and lima beans. Those don't go with eggs. Then I thought to check in the fridge, and, Ah-Ha! A pepper. So I diced it up so that I could make an omelet. I put cheese in too. I was so impressed with myself, I thought, oh look at me so fancy. Well it didn't end up to be much of an omelet after all. It turned out as scrambled eggs with pieces of pepper thrown in. Oh well, the kids didn't know I was attempting to make an omelet, if they know what that even is. It was good anyway.

Yesterday we went to Harry the Potter, where you paint pottery. I prophesied before we left the house that this would not go well. There are two of these places in the area, at least two storefronts. Danielle had told me if I wanted to take them there that I had to go to one and not the other because one of them was closed. Of course I didn't remember which was which so I just picked one. Wouldn't you know it was the wrong one. We got there and there were signs in the window that said SPACE AVAILABLE. The kids were ready to jump out and I told them it was closed. Olivia had a breakdown. I explained that she could still paint, we just had to go to a different one. So when we finally trekked across town to the right one, Olivia painted a sheep and Jacob painted a donkey. It didn't go as badly as I was expecting, I envisioned being covered in paint and the kids all a mess, but they were pretty neat about it. The painting didn't end up being the problem, it was just the getting there.

Darren made a homemade King Cake the other night. It was very good. That's really all I have to say about that, but I would have been remiss had I not mentioned it. Well speaking of king cakes, for those of you who don't know, and I am not really one to explain it, but they are for Mardis Gras, and they have a little plastic baby figurine inside, and whoever gets the slice with the baby in it has to buy the king cake next year. Darren bought king cakes for his office, and Danielle commented on how much they cost and asked why they should be that much? I said because they have real babies in them. In case anyone didn't find that particularly amusing, I won't share what "'What Line?' Danielle" came back with.

A big to-do this week was a hard freeze that caused water main breaks in Jackson wreaking havoc and closing the kids school for two days. Danielle had texted me Tuesday morning and told me that there was no school that day. I had seen that school was closed one day this month, so I thought nothing of it and rolled back over. When I got out of bed, I started thinking, "Wait, I thought that was next week..." So I looked at the calendar and sure enough, it is this coming Monday. I called Danielle but she didn't pick up, so I texted her and asked if she was sure it was today? At that point we may have made it to school or been late, but still in time for it to be worth going at all. Before she got back to me, but after it would have been too late to bother going to school, I distinctly remembered seeing Olivia's teacher when we were on the way out on Monday, and her saying, "See you tomorrow Olivia!" So then I was like Oh Great!!! Olivia missed school. But then Danielle texted me back and said that there had been pipes that burst. Phew. Even though that was much worse than Olivia missing a day of school, the city was out of commission for days, I was relieved. Well the way Danielle said it, I thought that it was just pipes at the school, not all over town. But still.

I think that I hit all the main events. Amanda and Barrett came to play one day, and I hung out with Melanie and Brent the other night. Today it was cold in the morning, but this afternoon was nice and "mild," so we went outside and the kids rode their bikes.

xoxo, Travvy