z’s bubbles 2

Picture…

Someday..

Zero to 60 mph: 4.0 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 9.5 sec
Zero to 150 mph: 23.5 sec

’nuff said…

Why do you ask?

C&D put it so well: Wagons arc cool!

“Let us suggest a solution (not that we would actually recommend this sort of sociopathic behavior, but if one were so inclined, it would be possible): pick up the kids in an E63 wagon. Pull up to the curb, brake-torque the Benz, start the rear hides a-boilin’, and invite the laughing bullies to climb in. Lift the brake, mash the gas, and lay a two hundred foot patch out of the school parking lot. Let the rears gather traction and you’ll rocket to 60 mph in four seconds flat on your way to one very-difficult-to-clean back seat and a 12.5-second quarter-mile at 115 mph. In the time it takes the young ones to sing the ABCs, the E63 will be whipping along at the 155-mph governor. No way the parents in the pristine SUV are cooler…when was the last time the carpool included mud bogging or rock crawling?” (full story)

After a rocky start of the day caused by an overloaded server, an overloaded router, rain, a flat tire and a car without usable windshield wipers, it ended up being a decent day! Lots got done today. From taking my suit to the cleaners, over doing groceries to getting a car inspected…

I thank what saved it were two things: first we came to an agreement with Liam: No TV with Monkey and no Monkey if thumb in mouth (outside of the four posts of his bed), second came walking through the Frisco Mall.

There was a part in the middle when everything was about to dwindle in a mad running around with my head cut off scene but it was saved by a delicious lunch at my mom’s and some wonderful behavior on part of the kids.

It’s one of those days where one can honestly look back and say it was an adventure, it was fun, not all got done, but tomorrow looks promising.

And that it does indeed

Last night ended up being somewhat bumpy… Cora got up three times (10pm, midnight, 2am) and then got us up at 7am, which wasn’t half-bad as we had to get Gillian to school anyway.

But.

We had no milk.

So I fall out of the bed, find which store has milk on sale and head to the nearest Kroger. By the time I get back it’s 7:45, the kids just got up and want socialize instead of eat breakfast.

We end up leaving at 8:15-ish by car… no walking Gillian to school today.

But, we call up my mom and ask her if she wants to walk with us through one of the housing comunities. She said yes, and it was a rather nice walk. We got to dream and drool… Our house is sitll there. Not for sale, but it’s still there. Liam was so adorable being a little pack rat and carrying 8 cars with him at all times. So cute…

From there, it went down-hill though. Back to “Oma’s house” for a potty stop and checking out my mom’s TV and Dish pricing. That took WAY too long and threw poor Cora’s schedule completely out the window. So we head back, feed ourselves some leftovers and put Liam to bed’ who, surprisingly offered very little fight to the treatment. Cora however was a different story. That poor thing hasn’t napped more than a half-hour since this morning! But… about 45 minutes before it was time to pick up Gillian from school, my mom calls saying the car wont start. And we already feel bad because she gets to drive the POS MX6 while she let’s us have her van… So I bring her the van, we figure out that the battery is completely empty and try to push-start the car without much success. Thankfully a friendly neighbour helps jump the car.

As a side note, even hooked up to his car, the Mazda wouldn’t start until it had been “rejuiced” for a full 5 minutes. Poor car.

Why was the battery dead? Well, the car had sat since July, pretty much and only made one small 10 minute trip this week. Then, the passenger door hadn’t gotten closed correctly causing the remainder of the battered battery to go down the drain.

Apparently my mom felt bad as not half-an hour later she calls, saying she’s at Gillian’s school and shows up a bit later with Ruth and Gillian. She then wants to talk about the “car situation” and insists we get a new battery for the Mazda.

After a trip to the library with her and dropping us off back at home, she calls me and sends me a phone number of a guy to talk to as he has the car she wants for sale… Gosh, that was fast. This morning they weren’t going to buy another one…

In the meantime, we struggle the kids into bed, and now it’s to yet another round of feeding-rocking-bed, rocking-bed, rocking-bed, rocking-bed with Cora…

We’re on the second rocking-bed set now and hopefully it will be the last for a while…

Nothing really got done today, I don’t think…

Sundays are always somewhat strange. Though this one went rather well. At least, if one does not take into account that Cora is not looking very settled at the moment…

This morning was good. Not nearly as hectic and/or stressful as it usually gets once everyone realizes that we have to leave in 30 minutes yet nobody is ready.

The cutest morning moment? Gillian asking what to wear. So cute.

Church went well too, except the huge fit Liam threw at the beginning. But cooling down in the car helped him… to the point of falling asleep in my lap 10 mins later. Poor little guy must have been sooo tired. Actually, everybody is coming across a tad tired these days. Wonder why that is… Our schedules haven’t changed all that much… Maybe it is the cooler weather.

Anyway… not much else comes to mind, mostly ’cause Roo is tapping the wall…

At times, those little critters can really make one feel so helpless.

So you have a child. It’s your first. Everything is an adventure. You don’t sleep. But you don’t care either. You have no idea what to expect and if you thought you did, your little bundle of joy will love to prove you wrong in a heartbeat.

And then they grow. And things change. They start walking, they start talking, they make bigger messes, they become even more loveable as they great you at the door after a day’s work with lots of smiles, hugs, and I-love-you-s.

Then #2 comes around. And you thought this is going to be a piece of cake; after all we’ve done this before, we all survived and #1 turned out to be a pretty good and seemingly well-rounded kid. And then somehow, it quite doesn’t happen that way. #2 does things differently. And all the things you knew were a perfect soporific, guaranteed to put any screaming infant to sleep in less than 5 minutes turn out to be completely useless against this little creature. And they have all these quirks #1 never had. Why does it have to be so hard? It must be me after all we’ve done this before!

And then… #3 comes around. And you think, yes they say three is the hardest, but it’s just going to be the same ole as with the previous two only more of it, right? Uhm…. No. In fact heck no! You see, not only do #1 and #2 team up against your every effort to take care of #3, but also, what you knew worked without fail before, is again proven to be complete rubbish!

The magic cuddles that put #1 to sleep? Don’t work. The walking that put #2 to sleep? Don’t work either. The happily playing on the floor moments both #1 and #2 enjoyed? They’re gone…

#3 is completely different. And a completely new challenge.

And then when this screaming bundle of misery is laying in your arms, while you’re desperately trying to rock her to sleep in the rocking chair (which is starting to make some very worrysome sounds), and you feel so helpless and like such an utter failure that you can’t even make someone so little, so innocent happy… she falls asleep… and smiles in her sleep… and instantly transforms you into a complete puddle, a complete emotional wreck… Which she must have enjoyed doing as she’s going to do it again, and again and a 4rth time.

But now, she seems to be down for good.

Hopefully she’ll stay there for at least the next 6 hours…

Once again, we’re left feeling like we’re nut shells drifting on the open sea, or, like Ruth put it, our lives are the marbles at the end of < a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0119654/">Men in Black. But at least we’re aware of it. Isn’t that the first step to breaking out of a rut?

Saturday

Saturday was the day of the first ever party hosted in our home. Granted it was geared at 5 year-olds, but still. Ruth had spend a week agonizing over it, whether or not it would be ok, and it ended up being a huge success. Which was not surprising. She had invited Gillian’s two best friends and their families over and everyone had a great time. It was the first time we met Cassie’s parents (which is sad, they live 2 houses down from us and ironically in the same house!). Liam refused to wear his dragon costume for the occasion, but Gillian and Roo made up for it by being Super Girl and the cutest witch, respectively.

At the end of the day, it seemed a huge weight was lifted off of Roo’s shoulders when it was obvious everyone had had a great time and I was left working ’till the wee hours of the morning to make up for taking off early…

Sunday

Hmmm… Sundays are always somewhat dreadful. True to the rule that the best actions are the hardest to take, Sunday mornings are always the hardest. This one was no different and we ended up almost skipping church. But we didn’t. And it was good that we didn’t. I think both Roo and I were able to take a lot home from what we heard that day. And the kids were absolutely great.

And in the middle of it all, I had a great chat in the hallway with Xanne; about parents, the stress of moving, and the apparent relationship between education and liberalism. It was quite entertaining really and it was good to hear someone share the same ideas as Ruth and I.

The afternoon, I don’t remember. So it must have been fairly uneventful. But I was able to visit the Millers and Ryon came over later. He’s such an interesting character He gave me a Blue AngelMonday

Hmmm…. Monday morning we walked Gillian to school. And for the first time ever, she broke into tears not wanting to let us go saying she didn’t want to go to school. It was the strangest thing from the girl who up until then absolutely adored school. My guess: she was just really tired from the 20 min walk and her choice not to sleep the night before.

So we picked her up from school a few hours later on our way to the Arboretum, where we spent most of the day courtesy of my employer. It was lots of fun. Though both Gillian and Liam were showing severe signs of tiredness. But they had a blast nonetheless. And Ruth and I both agreed: my mother needs to visit at least once as she loves plants and the views in the park as well as the current tree-house exhibition would probably maker her day.

Tuesday

And again, both Gillian and Liam were acting tired… For starters, she tried to pull the same act going to school. But this time she got to stay.

Then we made the mistake of going up to Ruth’s parents’ house to help clean the garage some more. When we got there Liam had just fallen asleep and thus was extremely cranky when we got there. Then we spent the next 3 hours going through an old trunk full of pictures, clippins and various memorabilia. Not that fun. When we left, we were late to pick Gillian up from school. But I did manage to get the bicycle home that Ruth’s dad gave me . And after picking her up from school, we decided to head towards Plano and then Richardson to find a fire-fighter costume for Liam. We figured, it’s Halloween, he has to wear a costume if he wants to go trick-or-treating and he had been wearing Gillian’s helmet from the year before. But that was somewhat of an ill choice…

Not only was Liam so tired that he rolled on the floor screaming as I was trying to see if the costume’s jacket fit him (which earned us LOTS of nasty looks from other customers) but it also took us 2 hours to do the 15 mile trip home. Though when we did make it home, Liam put on his costume without protest and even though it was rather cold, we all went trick-or-treating for 2 hours. In the end though, we were giving candy to people on the street and trying to pawn it off to other houses since we couldn’t pass it out at our door. But the important part was the kids had a blast. Even though they didn’t make it to bed ’till after 9…

Wednesday

Surprisingly they were really good today. Well, except two minor hickups. It probably did help though that Liam slept until 8am and took a 3 hour nap this afternoon. Though I didn’t get to shower or shave. Well, I didn’t get to do a lot of things. I wanted to work a little this weekend, which didn’t happen, i wanted to do bills, which didn’t happen either…. I guess I didn’t REALLY want to do those things…

So today we did a house rescue to ensure the rest of the week is somewhat smooth. I think that’s all we did… Yup…

Well, besides realizing that we feel in complete limbo.

We both need a plan again… we haven’t had one in a while. Without one, too many days are like this weekend: a complete roller-coaster, physically and emotionally. Which, let’s face it is no fun and leaves you feeling unaccomplished and somewhat insignificant…

Over and out…