Happy Birthday to Me :-)

So here goes, the latest and greatest from the Buckingham-Nolan household.

I'll start back with last Thursday since that's where I left off. After having such a wonderful day at the zoo on Wednesday, I knew that I had better be a little more productive on Thursday. We got up and I let Thomas watch Sesame Street while I folded some clothes and put another load in the washer. My goal that day was to have a reasonable balance between spending time with Thomas and getting some housework done - this is a very difficult task for someone as black and white as I am - I either want to clean the entire house from top to bottom or I want to focus on spending as much time as possible with my son. It is very hard to strike a happy medium with both.

After breakfast time, Thomas and I spent some time together until it was time for his nap. While he was napping I ran around like a maniac picking up the house, vacuuming the rug, and doing the dishes. After those things I started making dinner, since I was making a tuna casserole I could get everything done ahead of time. Plus, I had to leave for work at 5:30pm, so I wanted to be sure the food was ready for the boys when I left. Thomas got up from his nap and I had to find things to entertain him so that I could finish up the tuna casserole. Then I took a quick shower and got ready for work. My hope was that we would have an hour or two left over at the end so that we could go for a long walk in the stroller and go to the park so he would have some time to play. This didn't happen, because by the time I got everything done we only had about 1/2 hour left, so we went for a short walk. Thomas is so curious right now that a short walk isn't all that much fun for me because he wants to go up on everyone's porches and sit down on their stairs and all kinds of things. If I can get him to walk past two houses I have accomplished something. I would have taken him the stroller, but he didn't seem to want to go in the stroller and I do think it's important not only for me to get exercise but also for him to get plenty of exercise, especially at this age. I have noticed that he is much more manageable when he has gotten lots of exercise and is a little bit tired out. It is just difficult to find safe places where he can and will run around. He's still a bit small for a lot of the playground equipment. The pool is wonderful, but our weather is such that it's not warm enough quite often for swimming.

I went to work and worked my first 6pm-2am shift. It went very well overall. I really like the shift because there is no daycare needed, Emmett and I can pass Thomas off at the front door. And I get a full day with Thomas before I have to leave as opposed to the 4-12 shift, where I only get until 1pm when he goes down for his nap. By the time he gets up I usually am in an all-out race to get out the door by 3pm to get to work on time. The only hard part with the 6pm shift is that at 11pm you look at the person working next to you and realize that they only have 1 more hour to go and they get to go home and you have a full 3 hours left to work! Yuck! Also, I get a lot less sleep, of course, because I still have to get up at 7:30 the next morning, even though I've gone to bed at 3am. That didn't seem as bad, though, for some reason. I was sleepy, but it was manageable. It will probably be a lot less manageable when I have to several of those in a row, but for now it was fine.

I don't remember anything significant about Friday. Olga has made us commit to having Thomas at the daycare a minimum of 2 full days, so I took Thomas early, even though I didn't have to go to work until 4pm. I was intending to go home and get more sleep, but ended up reading a book for most of the rest of the time I was home. Work was good, I worked in registration, so that's always a little bit easier.

Saturday morning Emmett was doing a run so I had to get up with Tommy. I was a little bit upset about this because I forgot and so I stayed up really late reading that book the night before and ended up only getting a few hours of sleep. I was pretty cranky. I brought Thomas in the bedroom with me and let him run around our room for a while and play. One of the nice things about the fact that our bed is on the floor (can't fit a box spring up the narrow staircase of this old house and the window is WAY to small to fit it, so we have no box spring, which means we can't use the frame either. This results in us sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I wanted to get a split box spring so that we could rejoin the rest of the world on a normal bed, but Emmett thought he would be claustrophobic because he would be too close to the ceiling if we were on a regular bed since the ceiling over our bed is sloped. It's kind of hard to explain.) is that Thomas can run around and jump on our mattress and generally have a great time without fear of falling off the bed or hitting a headboard.

After a while we went downstairs because Thomas wanted to eat. He says, "Eat. I eat!" whenever he's hungry. He's starting to also voice a preference for what he wants to eat, which is cool, even if we don't always give it to him. This morning he wanted rice for breakfast. I probably could have just given him the rice, but since he'll probably be eating rice for lunch I wanted to give him some Cheerios for breakfast. He always loves Cheerios! He says, "yummmm". :-)

I've got to speed this up now. Sesame Street and Teletubbies are over and the boy is loose and likely to get himself into all kinds of trouble.

Emmett went to the farmer's market, thank God, so we finally have the good bread, and some fresh fruits and vegetables in this house.

[It's a little bit later now and I just put Thomas down for his nap. Poor boy hasn't had any fun today, basically been placated all day so that I can be on the phone with various friends and relatives.]

Anyway, Emmett finally got home from doing all his errands and I got a little bit of a break. I didn't get a whole lot of time, though, and all too soon it was time to go to work. Work was super busy, but at least I was working with someone who is good to work with, very easygoing.

Sunday. We got up fairly early [still no sleeping in for me!] and got ready and headed over to the flea market that I've been wanting to go to since we moved in, but never have managed to find the time or the inclination to actually DO it. It's in the same place as the farmer's market is on Saturday. It's pretty small, but lots of really good stuff, not so much like those 6 pair of socks for $1 (Emmett's words) type flea markets where all the stuff is the worst quality imaginable. No, this was more like antiques and various odds and ends but mostly high quality stuff and lots of unique things. I saw a wonderful wing back chair that I really wanted to buy (only $40 and it was antique, not reproduction, and newly reupholstered) but we only brought $13 with us to stop us from spending too much. Emmett found a gorgeous antique kitchen chest thingy that was from the 19th century, really nice, for about $500. We bought a couple shirts for Thomas (50 cents each) and some books (also 50 cents each) and that was about it. It was a fun experience and Emmett and I had some really good conversations on the way there and back.

After we got back, Emmett ran 16 miles and Thomas took a nap. I tried to lay down, but by the time I got down Thomas was back up. I went into his room to convince him to go back to sleep and after a 1/2 hour or so he did lay back down and we both napped in his room for another 1/2 hour or so before it was time for me to get up and get ready for work again. Emmett got home about 3:31, so RIGHT before I needed to leave, and I headed out for my 4th day in a row of working. Yuck!

The night at work was busy and I worked with this woman who is super high-strung, which is never fun because I was very tired and being around her just exacerbates the situation.

Also on Sunday I had gotten a call from a coworker who asked me to work for him on Monday, so Monday morning I was back up and rolling to get back to work again, 10am-6pm. I came home on Monday and made Uncle Cosmo's Greek Chicken, it was really yummy. Chicken breasts stuffed with a combination of feta cheese, lemon juice and oregano. Then simmer them in a broth of water, chicken bouillion (sp?), fresh spinach, and tomatoes. I served this on a bed of rice that I seasoned with saffron. It was very yummy! The only thing I will do differently next time is to buy some fresh oregano, I used the dried spice and I think I also used too much of it because the flavor wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

I was finally off yesterday after working 5 whole days in a row - you can imagine that I don't get TOO much sympathy from Emmett on this haha. Yesterday I did a little bit of clean up and spent some time working with Tommy and playing with Tommy. We did a 'battle of the animals' with his little plastic animals to see who would win. I think I was having more fun with it than he was and it definitely got Emmett's attention because after Tommy went to bed we had this long discussion/debate about the battle of the animals and which animals would be strong on what things and how much alligators weigh and how much Siberian tigers weigh. It was very fun and funny and one of those great moments in a relationship that are very light-hearted and yet we both learned. I had no idea that an alligator could weigh up to 2200 pounds and Emmett had no idea that a tiger could weigh up to 700 pounds. So we both learned something from each other. :-) I voted for the tiger to win the battle of the animals and in the end I think that Emmett conceded that it would probably win at least in the absence of the elephant. The elephant figurine was missing, so he felt that would change the outcome, I'm still unconvinced. I think the tiger trumps all! Anyway, we had fun with it.

Except that all that kept up us up till almost 11pm, so I wasn't going to get as much sleep as I wanted. Oh well....it was worth it.

I slept in a little bit today, didn't get up until Tommy work me around 8:30am. I have talked to Grandma B., Mom, Doug, Henry and Emmett (who sang a very sweet song to me over the phone).

I'm still deciding what to do with the afternoon...will recap that tomorrow.

Signing off now,
Love,
Meliss
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