Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

The weekend ended up being a mostly good one. Friday I left work early for Kate's speech therapy appointment. The therapist was pleased with her progress and recommended some more toys that could help with encouraging speech. We did some structured play so she could see how Kate picked things up, which went very well. We scheduled out the appointments for the whole of October, so we're finally going to be getting into the actual weekly meetings that we originally discussed. 

I took the rest of the day off of work, and spent the afternoon making a batch of pumpkin bread, which made the entire house smell good. We picked up tacos for dinner, and all of us got to bed a little too late in the evening, but eh, whatever.

I woke up on Saturday feeling both mentally and physically good, which hasn't happened in a hot minute. The baby was also in a good mood, so I took advantage of it all to get some chores done. I conquered dish mountain, the baby watched Ms. Rachel, I made us both breakfast. M got up around noon to the news that the background check for New Job was finally complete and accepted, and he was good to start on the 29th. Hooray! He put his notice in at Old Job immediately, and felt much relief.

The plan for Saturday had been that I'd take the baby with me in the morning to do some German food shopping at Aldi, but when I got up I realized just how long it'd been since I'd showered, so that didn't happen. New plan was to shower while the baby napped, but she kept fighting her nap every time I tried to put her down. She eventually was so tired that she ended up falling asleep on my lap at around 3:30, so I gently moved her to her crib and I finally got in some time to wash. 

Then it was a quick trip to Aldi to scope out German foods, and I was pretty disappointed with their offerings this year. I picked up a couple of packs of pastaroni-style spaetzle, a package of dried spaetzle, some frozen strudel and cakes, and some cookies, and that was about it. It also felt very disorganized - items were scattered all over the store and not put together in any sort of display, or even marked with any signage. I finally asked someone where all the German stuff was and they said it was "just sort of all over." 

I stopped at home to unload the frozen stuff so it wouldn't melt in the car, with the plan to then go on to Central Market for their German Passport offerings, but M requested that we go as a family on Sunday instead since there were some things he wanted to pick up, too. So, I called it a night and started on dinner, which was just ham, green beans, and a box of fettuccini alfredo. M went out with friends to go try and new wing place that his foodie group was raving about.

Sunday wasn't as good as day, mostly because I was extremely light-headed and achy all over. Blah. I tried not to do too much in the morning since I was pretty woozy, so it was just an easy breakfast for me and Kate. Everyone sort of faffed around the house most of the day, and thankfully, Kate finally took a decent nap. It seems that sleep regression is common at around the 2 year mark since there's just so much going on at that age, and Kate's going through all of it - language acquisition, molars coming in, potty training, the works. So she's fighting bedtime, fighting her naps, and waking up all through the night. This all means that she slept for nearly 4 hours during her nap on Sunday, since she was so exhausted.

Once she was finally up, we packed up the car and headed to Central Market, which was an absolute madhouse. They were leaning much harder into the German Passport theme than Aldi was, which was fun to see. They had carved wooden signage over all their different departments with the German names for those departments in big bright letters, paper signage pointing out all the German products, and displays of the German items within each department so they were easy to find. We ended up bringing home so much more than we went in for, and M declared that the spending limit was gone, let's just have fun and pick up what we want, so we got a big bienenstich cake from the bakery, lots of good bread, lots of good meat and sausages and cheese, some marzipan and other sweets, and some imported sodas. We spent about double the budget we had originally set but we had a good time and now we have many yummy things in the house. 

Kate did very well on the shopping trip, though she started getting restless toward the end, which, so was I honestly. Too many people, too much chaos, no one seems to know how to follow the flow of traffic, everyone blocking lanes with their carts, it was all a bit much. It was enough of an adventure that she was ready for bed not long after we got home, so it was a quick dinner of some leftovers, then right into bed, where she fought sleep for a good hour before finally passing out. 

I can't believe that October starts next week. It looks like it's going to be a busy month for us. Lots of speech therapy appointments for Kate, M has a trip to Chicago for a friend's wedding, Kate's 2nd birthday, OB appointments, just the works. 

Just two more months of being pregnant. I simultaneously can't wait to not be pregnant anymore, and am nervous about having two kids. Definitely not something I ever saw happening in my life. 

Feeling the pinch this week before our paycheck on Friday, so it's back to cooking until we get paid. Ingredients in the house are low, so dinner was hamburgers. I had planned some roasted sweet potatoes as a side since we didn't have fries or regular potatoes, but when I pulled them out of the bin I discovered they all had foot-long sprouts coming out of them, so they went into the trash instead. 

Kate ate all the cheese off the top of her hamburger patty and then ignored the meat. XP I supplemented her and M's dinners with some frozen potstickers, which seems to satisfy them both. 

Serbian pork for dinner tonight, since I have all the ingredients for that. 

Besides cooking dinner, the rest of the evening was pretty quiet. Kate was in a much better mood, except for a few small fusses about wanting to brush her teeth, which is her new favorite activity. She went down easily for the night, which was a relief. 

M heard back from HR at New Job, and all they need is a verification of employment letter and his college transcripts, and all this should be done with. The letter has been obtained, we're just waiting on the transcripts now. I know M will be massively relieved when all this is over with and he can put in his notice at Current Job. 

Saturday was a very busy day.  Had to get up early to get to LabCorp as soon as they opened so I could do my stupid gestational diabetes test. They give you a sugar drink then wait an hour to draw your blood, so it was a lot of sitting and waiting for just a few minutes of actual stuff to do. Got there at 8AM as the doors opened and it was already packed, and didn't leave until nearly 10. Blah. 

Once I was home, M went back to bed and I took over baby duty. She was in pretty good spirits and just sort of ran around for a couple of hours, then went down for a nap. I waited as long as I could before waking M again, then left at 2 to meet my sister for a movie. Saw the latest Conjuring movie. I didn't expect a masterpiece or anything, but I at least thought it could be a schlocky fun time. Unfortunately, it was just inexcusably boring. Even when they do finally get around to doing the damned exorcism during the last 20 minutes of the film, it was just so predictable and dull. Do not recommend. 

Got home to M in the middle of a cleaning whirlwind, which I got involuntarily swept up in. It was mostly just tidying up and taking out trash, which came to an abrupt end when we discovered that all the dumpsters in our complex had disappeared. 

After that, we packed up the baby and headed over to Carter's to get Kate some new shoes. It was a quick errand, and then M surprised me by suggesting we go out to dinner, so we went over to La Madeleine. It was Kate's first real restaurant outing where she wasn't tiny and asleep the entire time, and she did very well. She got some scrambled eggs and some cheesy pasta, and was very good about just sitting and eating and not disturbing anyone. Very proud of her.

The outing was enough to tucker her out, so she went to bed as soon as we got home. I finally got in a shower, and then headed to bed myself.

Sunday was a normal at-home day. Kate was well behaved in the morning, but as soon as she got up from her nap it was tantrum city for the rest of the day. -_- I know that's just the developmental stage that she's at, but good lord. By the end of the day I was just completely worn out, and my mood plummeted when she decided to throw her dinner into the cat litter. Then she dumped out the last of the cat food, and the cat's water bowl, and I was DONE and just put her to bed. 

Woke up this morning with a headache. At least it should be a slow day and I don't really have to concentrate too hard on anything.

Taking a FB break for a little while. So entirely sick of seeing stuff about Charlie Kirk. He was awful, he is dead, let's please relegate him to the trash can of memory where he belongs.

Lunch break yesterday was quiet. The baby had already been asleep for some time when I got home, so I reheated some pizza for lunch, made M a sandwich, made the baby a plate for when she woke up, put away the clean dishes, ate, and then headed back to work. Pretty nice!

Of course, that meant that our evening was a bit rocky. Kate had taken a very long nap, from 9am-1pm, and so hadn't napped again. As the night wore on she had more and more tantrums, the silliest of which was when she brought me a bag of bread, I gave her a slice of bread, and well, that was unacceptable. She asked for Teeth, so we brushed our teeth, and then she kept saying Teeth, so I gave her some Motrin in case her new canines were bothering her, and then tried to usher her to bed, which initiated another meltdown. 

She likes to pet the cats when she's feeling bad, so I took her back to the living room where she snuggled Tibby for a little while, and then I was finally able to get her to go to bed of her own volition, and she fell asleep almost immediately, only 30 minutes past her bedtime.

Unfortunately, M wanted to go out and get some late dinner, so I had to sneak into the bedroom to get his wallet and keys, and ended up waking her up accidentally. I thought I'd gotten away, too, but about five minutes after shutting the door I heard her going "uh-oh!" I had just been planning to go to bed myself, too. -_- 

Since she wasn't upset, just awake, we transferred her to her crib so M and I could go to bed ourselves. Through the monitor we could hear her babbling and giggling, so she was fine, and eventually she fell back to sleep on her own. 

M and I stayed up far too late chatting in bed, so I only managed about 6 hours of sleep before my alarm went off. Groggy today and bit headachy, so I'm glad it's Friday and I can pretty much just coast. Looking very forward to sleeping in tomorrow.