Hello World!

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

No, I’m not coding my first computer program.

I had a 2+ hour nap today and it. felt. awesome. Seriously, I haven’t felt this rejuvenated in a long time. I’m not even sure the last time I got a nap. I think it was back when I fainted. Or maybe around Christmas. Whenever, it’s been too long. Naps, I’ve missed you.

We’ve had a busy weekend and the nap was much needed. I don’t think I’ve been to bed before 11 p.m. since Wednesday. I’m one of those people that needs their sleep and my usual bedtime is around 9:30 p.m. So staying up 2 or more hours later than that, and still getting up at the same time, has taken its toll.

At any rate, we had a fun weekend and I spent a lot of time with Isabella. She and I both needed that. I can’t even tell you how much I love her and how much she amazes me every day.

Here are some of the highlights from the long holiday weekend.

Friday night we went to the park and she rode the teetor totter all by herself.

Yes I know she’s facing the wrong way but she’s still riding it without any help. She had a blast too. I have to make a conscious effort not to hover too close to her when we’re out at the park. I’m trying to remember to give her some independence and try things on her own, without help from me. I’m still close enough to catch her if she falls or make sure she’s doesn’t get hurt, but far enough that she is free to explore on her own. I can’t believe how grown up she’s getting! She turned 20 months today! AH!

Saturday I spent the morning getting my hair cut and colored. I wanted something fun and different so I told my hair dresser Mike to go crazy. He went darker all over and then we angled the cut to give it more body (my hair is SUPER fine and thin. I have like 3 hairs on my head. I would love to have super long hair but it would look horrible so I have to accept the fact that my options are limited).

I am happy with how it turned out though I’m still getting used to it. The sad part is that I can’t put it in a ponytail anymore. *gasp* Whatever will I do on a bad hair day?

Sunday we headed to the beach for the first day of pick up sand volleyball at Lake Manawa (while we were gone, the realtors had an open house for us and no one showed. Bummer). We set this up every year and basically spend every Sunday at the lake, playing volleyball, swimming and just chilling with friends. The weather looked worrisome in the morning but it actually turned out to be a great day, hot even! We only had enough people for doubles so I definitely got my workout in! 3 games of doubles in the hot sun was enough.

Isabella had fun too. She played on the little playground, dug around in the sand, walked along the beach and made a new friend.

We were all pretty exhausted that night. After Munchkin went to bed, CJ and I crashed out on the couch and watched some DVRed shows while chowing down on popcorn.

Today we met up with my family for brunch and then did a quick shopping trip at Babies R’Us. We got Isabella ready for summer with a some new sunglasses and a sun hat.

I know it’s blurry (used my phone real quick), but you get the idea.

Then we spent the day playing outside, either in the backyard…

…or at the park.

She has never been a fan of the swings but I was able to get her to sit on my lap today. She didn’t last long and she wasn’t happy about it, but it was a baby step.

(it was crazy windy out today which is why my hair looks like such a mess. Please don’t take that as an indication of how my new style looks!)

I even got CJ to demonstrate to me that he can in fact do pull-ups. (I tried and I can’t do them. I very impressed with people who can)

Isabella had insisted on bringing her new shades with her but of course dropped them as soon as we got to the playground. CJ was in charge of them from that point on.

Any guy who can do pull-ups is man enough to wear blue butterfly sunglasses. And hey, they actually match his Batman shirt!

That’s about it. Tomorrow it’s back to work for a short 4-day week, which is sure to mean craziness. But for once I feel like I actually got some rest over a long weekend so I’m ready to tackle the day job!

Have a great week!

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25Apr2011

Vacation from my Vacation

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

With my new job, I now get to enjoy extra days off. It’s a beautiful little concept called Exchange Holidays! That gives me 3 extra holidays a year! Boo-yah! My first official exchange holiday was last Friday (Good Friday) so I am coming off of a 3 day weekend.

And now I need a few days to recover from it.

CJ and I basically saw this weekend as a chance to hammer out more work on the house. Isabella saw it as a chance to put mom to the test. The combination resulted in aching muscles, tired eyes and frazzled nerves.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

CJ and I are dividing the house work up based on ability. He has the knowledge and skills to do lots of construction type work, having been in the biz for 30+ years, and I am really good at bossing him around. This weekend, he was focusing on getting our bedroom/bathroom finished up, along with various other things (including an unexpected plumbing project). I was going to be the one in charge of Munchkin so that he could work. I was really looking forward to spending the extra time with Isabella. Boy did I get a taste for what being a stay-at-home parent is like!

Friday was good. We played, we had snacks, and we ran to the store for some miscellaneous stuff. After she awoke from her nap, we went outside as it was a nice afternoon. She tried to help me pick up Samson’s dog poop using her bare hands. Luckily I caught her before she touched anything! I must have looked like a freak to my neighbors as I frantically waved my arms in the air and yelled NO!NO!NO!NO!

I can hear then now, “Gee Bill, I wonder what kind of interpretive dance Sarah is doing over there? Huh. Oh, maybe she got stung by a bee…”

I decided to take Munchkin to the park since it was so nice and neither of us wanted to go in. After playing for a few minutes, she decided it would be super fun to push the stroller so I let her push it all the way back home (about 2 blocks)!

Saturday is when the trouble started. I think Isabella has a little cold, or else she’s getting some teeth, and she was really crabby.

The morning was fine and she had an epic 2.5 hour nap after lunch. When she woke up we went back outside to play. It was a colder day though so we couldn’t stay out as long. She wanted to pick up flags. A few weeks ago CJ staked little flags out in our yard to mark the sprinkler heads so that the aerator guys wouldn’t run over them. Then he had Isabella go out and help him pick them up. Child labor is a beautiful thing. She remembered that and wanted to do it again, only there weren’t any to pick up! Well, ok, there was one. So I let her go out front and get that one but I wouldn’t let her run around with it for fear she’d fall and jab herself in the eye. Then I’d have to rush her to the hospital and she’d end up wearing an eye patch. I was not about to have her become a pirate and go blind on my watch!

She got very angry that she had to a) give the flag up and b) go inside. The cry-fest lasted for about an hour, off and on. I had to make a storage run and I ~~asked~~ begged CJ to come with. I was running on fumes and needed the extra help. I figured we could all go together, then stop and grab some chinese on the way back (food, not people). Crab Rangoon make everything better.

She whined/cried for most of the trip, partway during dinner and through her bath (which she normally loves). It took 30 minutes to get her to bed too. By the time all that was done, I was drained.

Easter Sunday started out great. We got up, had breakfast, did an egg hunt and Isabella got her Easter basket. It was getting to be about 10:30am and she was very tired. She started acting up. She wanted to be held and then she yanked on my hair. When I reprimanded her for it, she started crying.

That was all it took to break the dam loose.

She cried and cried and cried. For a solid hour. I tried everything and eventually just figured there was nothing I could do. I changed her in to her Easter dress (which I never got a picture of because of all the meltdown) and got her ready to go. Magically, a cure for her distress was found – hangers. Yes, that’s right, clothes hangers. In her teary-eyed daze, she wandered over to her closet and pulled out 2 hangers that were on the floor. She clutched those in her little hands and wouldn’t let go. She even took them with her to grandma’s house. Hey, fine with me. If I had known that, I would have given her that for Easter!

The rest of the day was basically more of the same. She had a few good hours here or there and then would break out in tears. We managed to get her through the egg hunt before laying her down for her nap. She was so beyond tired at that point that she refused to sleep. My mom had to use her super grandma powers to rock Munchkin to sleep. When she was finally down, a moratorium was put on the house that no one was to make a sound for fear she’d wake up. All the guys took that as their cue to nap too. Us women spent the time gossiping over cheese and crackers while the kids played outside. When Munckhin awoke, she went out and joined them.

Once we got home, she broke out in more fits and it again took about 30 minutes to get her to sleep.

By the end of the day, I was actually looking forward to going to work, just to get a break from the tantrums.

I tell ya what, I have renewed respect for my amazing husband who stays at home with Isabella every day. From the outside looking in, I get jealous that he gets all this time with our little darling while I’m at work dealing with deadlines and things. While he is lucky to spend so much time with her, and be a part of things I can’t, it’s not all fun and games and can be very exhausting. I definitely got a taste of that this weekend.

If only Arbor Day was an Exchange Holiday. I could really use another day off.

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4Apr2011

Weekend Wrap Up

Posted in Family, House and Home by teamtradermom

This was a busy, busy weekend. My mind was in super hyper over-drive trying to get done as much as possible on our house. Friday evening I rented a storage unit for us and then bought some boxes and other necessities.

One thing I bought was new moisturizers. Ever since the “generic moisturizer debacle”, my skin has been jacked up. It’s been dry and flaky and a struggle – even though I threw that bad one away and bought a new one! I did a Google search and found 2 recommendations: one was to try CeraVe which is extra nourishing without being greasy or too heavy. The other was to use extra virgin olive oil which can penetrate deep without clogging pores. Sounded weird to me but I was desperate. So I bought both.

As soon as Isabella went to bed I washed my face and put on the olive oil. My first reaction – wow, this really smells like olives. Shocking I know. But seriously I was not expecting that! It took me some time to get used to. But it went on smooth and I felt confident it would work. I headed out to the living room and sat down on the ground to clean up Munchkin’s toys. Next thing I know there is a big Labrador tongue licking my face. He was like, sweet! Mom is now wearing food! Total score!

I had to fight him off for like 5 minutes until he finally gave up. I am not your own personal salad bar dude!

Then I started packing! Well, that’s not entirely true. First, I made a map of the house.

Cue OCD! I had to figure out a way to pack our house and keep some kind of system. Otherwise, when it came time to unpack, we would have no idea which boxes went where. Sooooo….I laid our house out on a diagram and gave each room a number (and I color coded it…hey I couldn’t resist!). I also gave letters to certain categories of items. Once a box was packed, I would write the room number and also the appropriate categories for the contents. For example, the dining room is room 6 and the first box had pictures and knick knacks in it so I wrote “6, A and C” on it.

When I told CJ the system he asked if he needed to memorize the map and then he gave me a look that said “when we vowed for better or worse, I thought the worse was the comfortable clothes/pajama thing. I didn’t realize it involved this craziness too.” Hey, he’ll thank me when the move-in process is a snap!

So Friday night I got 3 boxes packed and the dining room essentially done. It felt good to get started.

Saturday was not a good day for Isabella and Samson. They just were not on the same page. He knocked her down twice with his big 90 pound butt. Then he tried to take a banana from her. She milked it every time too by throwing a big ole fit. She’s learning that if she cries or whines, she might get attention. Sometimes it’s for real, other times she’s working the system. Honey, I invented that trick. You have to get up pretty early to catch a worm like me (bonus point if you can name the movie that’s from). So the whole weekend has an undercurrent of toddler whining and crying fits in it. By the end I was, like, so over it to the point where I’d just let her cry while I changed her diaper/brushed her teeth/changed her clothes/washed her face/buckled her in the car seat. I know, I’m so evil.

Saturday afternoon was “me time”! I got my hair cut/colored, then met some girlfriends for lunch and pedicures. We even stopped for frozen yogurt afterwards. Hey, you knew I would get sweets worked in there somewhere right?

It was very relaxing and just what I needed after a long week. On my drive home I checked my phone for messages and found a text from CJ that said the accountant had called and they had found a mistake with our taxes. Basically, instead of getting about $4000 in a refund, we had to pay $400. I blinked at it a couple times and then thought, I bet this is a late April Fool’s joke. That’s what I prayed for anyway.

Alas, it was not. I guess the software program the accountants use had a defect that caused 15 returns to be wrong. One of which was ours. Now I have to not only pay back the $900 from State that we’d already spent but write a new check for $400. Oh the humanity! And just when we’re trying to save money too.

Spent the rest of Saturday working around the house. We loaded up the car with boxes and took our first trip to the storage unit. Yippee! Isabella wasn’t as excited about it as we were. We drug some palettes in there, loaded in the boxes and then hit the road. On the way home we stopped at the park to let Isabella play. She had fun running up and down a big hill and digging in the sand. Then as a special treat we stopped by Dairy Queen for some ice cream. See how I worked sweets in there again? It’s a gift really.

Sunday I ran some errands with Munchkin while CJ worked at home. When I told her we were going shopping she said, “Shopping, yeah!” Start ‘em young, that’s what I say! Then all of us took advantage of the nice weather and worked out in the back yard pulling up weeds and dead plants. I love that Isabella is an outdoorsy girl. Makes it so much fun and gives us lots more ways for her to burn energy.

Now it’s on to another week – hopefully a productive one! We’ve made 3 trips to storage so far and will probably make one a day from now on, until everything that we need to get out of the house is gone. My car will be able to drive itself there before too long!

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11Mar2011

Girl’s Night

Posted in Family, Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

Every Friday night is Girl’s Night at the Trader house. CJ has a standing engagement with friends so Isabella and I take advantage of the time to have some mommy and daughter bonding. Don’t worry, we include Samson too, even though he’s not a girl.

All day I was itching to get outside because it was so beautiful (67 degrees at one point)! Of course, by the time I got home, it had started to cool off a bit, and the wind picked up. But that didn’t stop Munchkin and me from putting on some jackets and heading down the street to the park!

The last time I brought Isabella to this park was in the fall of 2010 (probably Octoberish). Back then, she was new to walking and hadn’t started climbing or anything so there wasn’t much she could do. This time she was all over the place! I pulled her out of the stroller and she took off! The first thing she did was run to a big circle cut out and crawl through it. She loves to go through things like tunnels and what not.

Then she ran over to the slides. She hasn’t quite figured out yet that slides are for going down, not up. She always tries to climb them.

She actually got about halfway up before sliding back down again. I tried to take her down on my lap and she wasn’t interested. Some day she’ll get it and love it!

I took her around to show her the stairs and she quickly climbed up them. At the top there were all kinds of things to do, like driving a fire truck…

…crawling through a tunnel….

…and climbing in a bubble!

We spent a good 45 minutes there running around, doing all kinds of things. They had a rocking horse and rocking turtle thing there too but she said “No!” every time I tried to coax her in to riding on one. She wasn’t much interested in the sea-saw either (although she likes to yell out, “See-SAW! See-SAW!”).

When it was finally time to head home, because it was getting cold, I let her walk instead of riding in the stroller. She half walked/half ran the whole way too (which was only 2 blocks, but still, that’s a lot when you have short little legs)!

She even pushed the stroller the last half a block home, though I couldn’t get a picture of that because she was leaning on it enough that I was afraid if I let go she’s face plant in to the sidewalk.

As soon as we got home it was time to make shamrock cookies! She helped me put them on the cookie sheet but didn’t quite get that they are still raw dough and need to bake before they can be eaten. She cried when I took the pan away and put it in the oven. But, she was plenty happy when they came out 10 minutes later and were ready to eat!!

She’s in bed asleep as I type this, which gives me some much needed downtime. I plan to head upstairs soon, curl up on the couch with Samson and catch up on my DVRed shows.

I really love our Friday nights and am very hesitant to give them up, which is why I don’t accept many invitations to go out. I would much rather be home with my angel, getting some quality time in.

Another girl’s night down, many, many more to come!

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V-weekend, part 2

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

Now on to part 2 of our Valentine weekend. You can read all about part 1 here!

After we got home from Heather and Jeremy’s, we spent the rest of the day, taking it easy. The weather was really nice and the sun shining through the windows was awesome. Isabella and I both took a nap in the morning and while we were asleep, CJ hid Valentine’s around the living room for us. We went on a hunt for them together and Isabella had so much fun with it. I would see one and then ask her if she saw a “card” nearby. She would look around, spot the card, point to it and yell, “YES!”

Here she is handing me the pile of Valentine cards (they were superhero ones):

During the afternoon, I got my baking groove on and made a heart-shaped cake, some cake truffles and chocolate covered rice-Krispy’s, while CJ delivered Valentines to the neighbors (and took down the Christmas decorations). Sounds like a lot but I basically used the same ingredients for it all. I first made up the cake batter and used half of it for the heart-shaped cake and the rest got poured in to a mini-cupcake tin to be baked together. When the mini-cupcakes cooled, I put them in a bowl, crushed ‘em and added chocolate frosting. Mixed that all up and put it in the fridge to chill for a bit. In the meantime, the cake was cool so I frosted it with the remaining chocolate frosting. Then I took some chocolate almond bark and melted it. The truffle batter was chilled enough by now so I rolled it into little balls, dipped those in the melted bark and voila – chocolate cake truffles! With the leftover almond bark, I poured the cereal in and spread on to a cookie sheet. Then everything got topped with red sprinkles! Done and done!

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Just a lot of playing and laughing and snuggling. Isabella must have known it was a weekend to celebrate love because she sure dished it out – and I soaked it all in!!

Monday arrived, the actual Valentine’s Day, and I woke up to find some flowers from my honey in the refrigerator.

I worked out, got ready for work and then found another gift in the cupboard when I went to feed Samson – a card and chocolate heart. CJ sure knows the way to my heart!

Sunday night I had made up and hid some more cards for Isabella to find and she had fun discovering them throughout the day. I was a little sad that I wasn’t home to see her find each one but at least she knew I was thinking of her while I was at work. Here is her collection of cards, including ones from the grandparents! She is one loved little girl!

After dinner, we gave Isabella a little gift. She got an Elmo Valentine book and a Leap Frog Alphabet Pal caterpillar (which she calls an octopus. I guess they do both have a lot of legs)!

That was pretty much our Valentine’s weekend! Fairly low key and simple, yet filled with lots of fun and love, the way V-Day should be. To me, it was the perfect way to celebrate.

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