shopping without honey

it's busy season and honey's out of town again.  left for work as usual friday morning and won't get back until tuesday night.  so today basically felt like a friday again.  my days are easy because they consist of three parts.  morning: baby and i have an outing... play date, errands, or hanging out together at home.  afternoon: naptime.  evening: dinner and hanging out as a family.  when honey is gone it's normally during the week and mornings are simple during the week because we have story time and friends to hang out with.  night time and weekends are a different story because we're on our own.  everyone else has husbands and is doing stuff as a family.  and we've normally already completed all of our errands and we really don't have many to begin with.  so with my honey gone for this many days in a row and over the weekend i was more than a little worried.  but i'm happy to report that it's going really well.

last night baby girl was sad when i told her daddy wouldn't be coming home to play with us but we went to a middle school play (two of my young women were in it) and met up with people there so we had a good time.  this morning we went to the dollar store and goodwill.  i sure love the dollar store but i really do hate our goodwill.  it's full of crappy, overpriced junk.  today though i got lucky finding the 7th harry potter book in hardback in absolutely pristine condition.  since it's a kids book it was only $1.  retail is $35 so i was thrilled.  it's not really in the budget at that price y'know?  now i have the 4th and the 7th in hardback.  send a note to my goodwill and tell them i'm looking for 1,2,3,5, and 6.  then we went to the park on main street and it made me realize that i should make more of an effort to take baby girl to parks populated with kids.  our neighborhood park is empty more often than not and i think half the fun for her is just watching the other children.  

2-6 was naptime.  baby girl had some cheese and pineapple and we were off shopping.  because who wants to sit at home on a saturday night?  not me... it still creeps me out being at home at night without my christopher.  will i ever grow up?  we went to old navy and ross.

i found some awesome maternity jeans at old navy but they were $40 so i didn't get them.  don't ask why i tried them on in the first place.  probably just to be rude to myself.  i found some other good deals but i exercised restraint and didn't buy anything for myself.  i just kept repeating my new mantra.  just kidding, i don't have a new shopping mantra.  but i kept reminding myself that even if something is cheap and a really good deal, i don't need to buy it unless i have a specific need for it.  sooo, tonight i've been back and forth fifty times about kicking myself for not buying the stuff i was contemplating and patting myself on the back for not spending money on things i can do without.  

while i was going through the maternity section (located right next to the little boys section), baby girl found this awesome thomas shirt... in her size and everything!  she was SOOOOOO excited and when i told her it was time to go to the dressing room she kept telling me that she was bringing thomas to try it on.  need something to melt your heart and make you giggle?  have your two year old tell you how excited she is to go to the dressing room to "try it on."  

seriously i wanted to get her this shirt soooo badly.  just look at that happy face!

but it was $15 and, as i said, i wasn't feeling spendy.  we escaped with a $2 t-shirt for baby girl instead and headed next door to ross.

it's typical when we go to ross for baby girl to pick a toy or item of some sort and carry it with her throughout the store.  i like that because it slows her down and keeps her hands a little busy.  this time though she picked out a chair (and tossed a hat/mittens combo on there for good measure) and pushed it around the store while we shopped.  and because i'm more add than usual when i get inside a ross, we probably made the rounds with that chair a good four times.  for probably about an hour.  just killin time.

add some heels to the mix...

 

 

 

 

and we definitely got some comments.  i very rarely see black people in parker (it's white suburbia at its finest) but there were several black women at ross (probably because it's in centennial... sliiiightly more diverse) and they were so hilarious and friendly about baby girl and her heels.  we all had a good time in the shoe section tonight.

meanwhile, honey is just living it up in south dakota...

life is good but i can't wait til tuesday!

16 weeks

How far along:  16 weeks  (7.12.12)

Total weight gain/loss: + 3 lbs  

Maternity clothes:  not yet but there are definitely lots of my regular clothes that i don't wear anymore because they're either too unflattering or too short.  i borrowed all of my maternity clothes last time and gave them all back so i'm thinking i should go shopping soon...

Stretch marks:  this is the last time you'll see this question.  i have plenty of stretch marks from last pregnancy... so any news about stretch marks i'll just be including in the "extra" section.

Sleep:  not fabulous since i woke up on sunday with a bad cold.  i've been having to read at night until i get suuuuper tired and then i can just shut my book and fall asleep.  my other alternatives are a) lay down and constantly feel like i'm suffocating because i'm too congested to breathe through my nose and b) "lay down" with my head so elevated i wonder if my neck is going to snap in half during the night.  as of this morning i've been feeling better though so hopefully  i'm on the mend!

Best moment this week:  loving food.  even though i was no where near as sick this time around, i really haven't been crazy about food.  but this past week there's been several times i've eaten something and almost melted because it hit the spot so perfectly.  

Movement:  sometimes i think i can feel something if it's night time and i'm laying down and concentrating really hard.  but i'm pretty sure i'm just delusional.  

Food cravings:  hmm, scrambled cheese eggs for breakfast on sliced toasted, buttered, french bread.  every single day... so delicious.  also, as a general rule, beef is awesome.  like in those stuffed peppers.  comfort foods.  i'm still in that "full fat food is good for you!" mentality so i'm trying to teach myself moderation.  chicken is not great, neither is fish right now and don't you dare try to feed me bbq.  sweets are delicious but the texture of fruits is grossing me out.  so hit and miss with stuff.  looove raw veggies with dip.  looots of dip.  and of course tons and tons of milk.  can't get enough.

Gender:  so frustrating that i'm far enough along that you could easily tell but i don't get an ultrasound until next month!  i have planning and preparing to do and i can't get on it until i know what this baby is!

What I miss:  drugs.  like two nights ago when i was suffocating with congestion as i attempted to fall asleep and i thought to myself, "my life wouldn't suck so bad right now if i had a bottle of dimetapp.  also would be handy for those frequent headaches like the one i have right now.  

Milestones:  hitting the 16 week mark.  that's a big one.  15 weeks is child's play but 16 weeks is the real deal.  now i'm looking forward to 20.  that's legit.
Theme: the week of being sick and hitting 16 weeks!
Extra:  i had my 16 week appointment on thursday where i met my doctor.  my only previous appointment was at 8 weeks when i met with the nurse practitioner.  anyways, this appointment was the most pointless waste of time ever.  basically, they just weighed me, checked blood pressure and stuff, listened to a heartbeat ( i guess that's kinda important), and answered my questions.  i'm guessing my doctor was either a preschool teacher or sesame street actor in her previous life.  i wish someone else had been there with me to witness it.  also, i know it's common for doctors to do this but for some reason it was bothering me yesterday when she kept making comments as if she knew me.  lady, i know you just read through my chart right before you walked in the door, don't act like you know me and my history.  like when i told her "yes, this is my second pregnancy, my daughter will be turning two on sunday" then she just kept making comments and attempting conversation with stuff like "she keeps you really busy!" and whatever.  ummm no, you have no idea what my kid is like.  she keeps me occupied but i would in no way say that she keeps me "busy" so you must be thinking of everyone else's two year olds because my angel baby is the exception to that rule.  she also commented that i'd gained SIX pounds so far this pregnancy and i was like "WHAT?!  where'd that number come from?!"  and she was like "well, your prepregnancy weight was 118 and today you weighed in at 224."  and so i explained "yes, but i weighed 118 at HOME so you have to had a few pounds for clothes."  but she took a look at her computer screen and corrected me.  apparently at my 8 week appointment i only weighed in at 118... fully dressed.  so i apologized for being wrong and explained that i actually did get super sick during week six and pretty sick during week seven so i must have lost weight before that appointment.  anyways... by my calculations, weighing at home without clothes, i started at 117-118 and am now at about 121.  so we'll say i started at 118 and have gained three pounds.  that's my story and i'm sticking to it.  although my meals these days are so huge and i'm drinking so much milk that any weight that's not taken immediately after waking up is going to kinda all over the place.  the other thing that bothered me about my doctor was that she seemed unsure and almost apologetic of herself.  like when she commented that i was starting small but that she hoped we could shoot for me to gain 30 pounds if that's something i could try to do.  like a question she was shy to ask because she didn't want to impose.  once again, lady, you have no way of knowing this but i'm a little obsessive about being pregnant and have already spent more hours than you should care to know researching about my pregnancy this time around. i already know i need to gain at least 30 pounds, i'm with you, don't apologize, just tell me that's our goal and remember to congratulate my progress at future appointments.  she also followed this up with telling me that i could eat as much ice cream as i wanted this pregnancy which was kind of humorous coming from a medical professional.  so that redeemed her some points.  but let me get this straight for the record... i have no ill feelings towards my doctor... i just thought the experience was a little strange.  my big ultrasound appointment is scheduled for monday august 6th and i'm excited that honey will be able to come with me this time.  last time he had a midterm and couldn't come and i felt bad that he missed out because it was such an insanely incredible and spiritual experience for me.  i'm excited this time around that we'll get to experience it together.  also, i'm at the awkward stomach stage where i can either look fat, suck in my stomach and look normal (to strangers... close friends would notice), totally relax my stomach or push it out and look hugely pregnant or anything in between.  and of course it depends on meals and what i'm wearing too.  i was at walmart earlier this week and ran into a woman whose little girl kept giving abigail her doll to play with.  so we made small talk.  she was hugely pregnant so i asked her when she was due, fully expecting her to say some date within the next month.  and then i could excitedly tell her i was due in december (because i'm that annoying pregnant person that thinks we're BFF if we're both pregnant).  well, her due date is sometime in october and thank goodness my filter was working because my head screamed "ARE YOU HAVING TWINS?!?!" but my mouth said "oh my goodness how exciting!"  goodness that lady is twice the size of my other october due date friends.  so you better believed i sucked in my belly and didn't mention that i was due two months later.  i hope people are that nice to me when i'm enormous in a few months.  because i know my stomach is going to be epic.

and last time i never posted pictures with the weekly posts... because i really didn't want a whole lot of pregnant pictures of me on the internet... but this time around i've already enjoyed looking back at those posts and have been hating that i don't have pictures pared with them.  sooo, for my own sake, i'm going to try to suck it up and do it a little differently this time around.  here are a variety of poor quality pictures to show you how i may look throughout the day depending on how lazy my stomach is and how recently i've eaten.

 

 

 

 

and because we all hate posts without pictures of baby girl, here's two that got left out of yesterday's post.  "glasses on!"

 

i think it's a good look for her.  she's going to be an awesome big sister.

stuffed peppers

SUCCESS!!!  SUCCESS!!!

i made this recipe for stuff peppers tonight and honey and i were both extremely impressed!  when i was browsing through my favorite cookbook i came across a recipe for stuffed peppers and thought, "oooohhhhh!  that actually sounds good!"  but instead of just making that recipe (it cooked in the microwave and ours would have been too small for that), i got online and looked up a million stuffed pepper recipes and this one sounded the best and got rave reviews.  and it didn't look too too difficult.  i really wanted something more than just "good" because honey and i love stuffed peppers but our only experience with them was either eating them in hungary - the real deal - or eating them in the states made my someone using a hungarian recipe.  i had big expectations. 

and honestly...it was, for me, kind of a lot of work (though it wasn't anything challenging) but so so soooo very worth it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

i made it mostly according to the recipe but with a few changes out of necessity and because i'm lazy.

- i had only bought two giant peppers from the store because i was planning to half the recipe.  then i remembered that i hate fractions (and normally part way through cooking i stop remembering to half things and it's a big disaster) and that it's twice the work (math) for half the food.  so i just cut the peppers in half length wise so i could stuff them more.  and that way you get more meat mixture... which i loved.

- i didn't have any celery.  also, i didn't have any pepper to mix in with the onion and nonexistent celery because of the way i decided to cut them and there was no "waste" or leftovers.  

-i didn't remember to boil the peppers until i was ready to stuff them - whoops - and the oven was already preheated and i was on a time crunch because i actually knew when my christopher would be getting home so i just boiled a bit of water and then rotated the peppers through a few mins each.  they had plenty of time to cook in the oven anyways.

-i thought i had tomato sauce but turns out it was tomato paste.  so i poured that in and added a can and a half of water.  also, all of the reviews said that the recipe was perfect as is but that the sauce was so good they would double it.  so my measurements aren't exact for the sauce (i still just did the one can of tomatoes) but with all of that tomato paste and water it was a great amount of sauce and although it looked like a TON while cooking, it was the perfect proportions for eating.

- i thought i had garlic but actually i'm out.  this made me super sad but in order to not completely miss out, i added garlic salt.  

- the recipe calls for oregano which i learned, i don't have.  but the recipe also called for basil and i happened to have italian seasoning which is oregano, basil and other awesome stuff.  sooo, i was really generous with that.  i tasted the sauce as i went to make sure it wasn't too bland.  i was worried after all the tomato paste and water!

-i was also more generous with the worcestershire sauce... 2 teaspoons instead of 1.5 just because i love that stuff.

- when i did the meat mixture i added the full 1.5 cups cooked rice and i added 1.5 cups of sauce instead of the 1 cup that it called for.  according to my bathroom scale, i used about 1.5lbs of ground beef that i pulled out of the freezer.  what a pleasant surprise when it happens to be the exact amount called for in the recipe!  i also mixed in juuuust a bit of grated parmasan cheese in the meat mixture... not enough that it would be cheesy inside (it was tempting though!) but just enough to keep adding flavors in there.

- i sprayed a 9x13 pan and somewhat covered the bottom with the tomato sauce mixture, then placed the stuffed peppers on top and poured the rest of the sauce over it all.  covered with foil and baked for an hour. sprinkled with mozzarella (all of the recipes suggested sharp cheddar cheese but that seemed off base to me since it had a very european italian feel to me) and let it get melty and browned which only took about 10 mins.  the peppers were excellent but the cheese really made it happen.  those bites were the best!

soooo, all of those extensive notes for myself are to say that this will become a regular for us.  honey said it was the best thing i've made in months.  which, even though this is the first time i've actually cooked in the last 30+ days, i'm pretty sure means this was incredible.  the peppers were enormous and we each ate a whole one because they were just that good.  baby girl liked it too although she wasn't CRAZY about it but probably because she's not a huge fan of meat (unless it's bacon, sausage, hotdog, or anything else loaded with flavor, fat and sodium).  next time i'll have to make even more because apparently they can be frozen after for up to a month.  i would totally do that this time but i'm pretty positive they'll get eaten out of the fridge just fine in the next few days.  two containers of this...

probably won't last long at all.

"poopoo!" = "peekaboo!"

should my child ever cover her face and say "poopoo!"... you actually have no need to fear.  it's just a friendly game of peekaboo... no poo involved.

 

 

 

 

ps- i'm looooving the curls that are starting to happen on this little head of hers.

flying bunnies and my excellent day

today was wonderful.  i have so much to post but some of it will have to wait until tomorrow and monday and probably tuesday.  because let's get real, my blogging hasn't been too spectacular lately.

so we'll just do everything as bullet points so it's not too overwhelming for me.  i don't forget this glorious day... which don't hold your breath, it's just an ordinary day that i happened to love in an extraordinary way.

- i slept in until 9 30... and probably would have been able to sleep longer except that my honey got bored and woke me up.  for some reason (it's far too bright in my room) i wake up at 6 30 every day and then spend the next 2 hours in that half awake state, attempting to get back to sleep.  so this was pretty epic.

- honey was itching for a walmart trip (but not a family walmart trip because he hates those, and rightfully so because we can never seem to get through one still liking each other) so i told him he had to get a few things on my list (cinnamon rolls, kettle corn, an onion... y'know... the odds and ends i somehow missed this week) and he volunteered to take our baby with him!  i can tell he loves those little outings with just him and baby girl.  anyways, i took the opportunity to pack some fresh fruit (with my little fruit fork, carolyn!) and a book (i just started atlas shrugged today) and headed to the pool to actually LAY OUT.  i loooove laying out and have been obsessed with it since i was like 5 or something... can't remember exactly but i do remember my mom taking me to the pool and asking me why i kept sitting in the chair instead of swimming in the water.  ha.  the difference is that i used to get super tan and black and now i have a baby and am more responsible about life so i cover myself head to toe in 30 spf.  never anticipated that happening.  i will be white forevermore.

- i left the pool because the clouds came rolling in and the thunder started.  i stayed for a while since it was breezy and the sweat it out heat was replaced with perfect pre-storm air but then eventually i missed my honey and baby so i headed home and they were outside on the driveway.  baby girl was riding her bike and honey was planting more little seedlings (i'll have to blog about that sometime... for honey's posterity to know that at one point he loved his little seedlings as if they were his own offspring) or something.  we all hung out like that in perfection for a while and then frantically moved a pile of rocks while the rains started pouring down on us.  it made me laugh while i was running rocks back and forth and it kinda made me feel like it should be part of a movie.  and then we came inside.

- we opened the window so we could listen to the storm and i watched the downpour outside while baby girl ate her lunch.

- then i had the most awkward experience ever.  this will need it's own post.  just thinking about it makes me want to die.  seriously.  and maybe stop going to church too.  so wish me luck tomorrow.

- honey put baby girl down for nap, we watched tv together, and then i got the bug to organize our food storage in the basement.  this may have caused a little disagreement between honey and myself and short story shorter... he needed some alone time and ended out passing out in bed upstairs while i organized our food storage in the basement for an hour or two.  i lost track of time and was brought back to reality when i faintly heard my baby's cry and then glanced at my watch, panicked that it was 7:20.  ran upstairs to realize that honey was asleep and that baby girl was still in her crib from nap!  disclaimer: she didn't go down until 3 and had a super long nap.  i would have heard her earlier if she'd been awake earlier but i think she must have slept for at least 3.5 hours.  we'll never know.

- my organizing bug kept going strong and i cleaned out my car, and did an organizing overhaul on our garage.  combine this with the food storage overhaul, vacuuming for the first time in who knows how long (okay, i can't take credit for that... honey vacuumed the whole house this morning... but it still made me feel accomplished), cleaning out baby's closet, and doing a whole number of smaller tasks... the day was a success.  i've been slacking on the whole domestic housewife thing lately so this helped get me back on track a bit.  oh, and last night i reorganized our freezer (maybe not all of it but the parts i did look awesome!) and the fridge.  i need credit for those too.

- i didn't put baby girl to bed until 10:15 tonight. her sleep schedule has kinda shifted back two hours over the course of the past two weeks.  but whatever... having a baby that sleeps til 10am has it's perks and honey and i loooove that playtime with baby girl at night.  she's always so silly and happy.  tonight it was dancing... of which i have videos.  that will also require it's own post.

ps- yesterday i saved a baby bunny's life.  and today i saved another baby bunny's life.  here are pictures.

it fell into the window well for one of our basement windows and had no way of getting out.

 

 

jumping bunny

and in this picture i swear he's allllmost flying.

and here's baby girl.  doing this thing she likes to do lately.  she lays on her stomach and slides herself (forward or backward) all over the kitchen.  i should just dampen her pj's and it could replace that whole "mopping" thing that i never seem to get around to.

 

 

 

and then she asked where daddy was so i told her he was sitting on the sofa and she went crawling away like this.  i called out to her, "baby girl!  are you being stealth?!" to which she promptly and loudly replied, "YEP!"  man, how that kid makes me laugh.

my life is too wonderful i swear.

the cell phone saga

meet my current cell phone... as of less than four hours ago.

it's a samsung sway.  and i actually got it several years ago right before we moved to california... sooo fall of 2009.  it was cute and sleek and had all these cute font options and everything... i was in love.  but then for the next 8 or 9 months as i was loving everything else about my phone, i was hating the super short battery life.  standby time was less than 24 hours and the talk time was about 1 hour before the battery was drained and the phone shut off.  it was a huge pain.  after a million equally terrible refurbished phone replacements (can't verizon just admit it's a crappy phone that shouldn't be on the market and refund my money for a working phone?!) i gave up.  we struck a deal with the store manager that i could get a brand new phone as long as i started my two year contract over again from the current date.  so basically he let me out of the other two year contract and i started a new one, getting a new phone with it.  it was better than nothing but i was still annoyed to have to start a new contract.  and during that 8 months, verizon had changed their policy on phones and data packages so there were about 4 options for phones that didn't require a pricey data package... and they all sucked.  oh well... i got one anyways, just excited for a phone that i could talk on for more than an hour and didn't have to charge multiple times a day.

enter the lg cosmos.

i tried to console myself that maybe this phone would be cool because it slid open to reveal a full keyboard and might be easier for texting and stuff.  and actually it had a few things on there that i really liked... like the way it grouped my text messages by person.  i used this phone for almost a full two years.  until 2.4.12 actually... when i posted this post... after dropping my trusty lg cosmos in the toilet.  it actually dried out and worked somewhat after a few days but the wires were loose so to speak.  certain buttons did random unrequested tasks.  and occasionally it would just start scrolling through my contacts quickly and indefinitely until i turned off the phone.  i said goodbye to the cosmos and hello to...

honey's phone from 2006.  

i don't even know the name of this thing.  but it's six years old.  and it looked it.  iphone friends that had previously made fun of my cosmos for being a dumb phone were now speechless with the return of this ancient flip phone.  this phone had the mp3 option so if you pressed that "play" button you see there on the front, it would blast out your stored music.  i think there are less than 10 songs on there.  all from a chris merritt cd we bought at a provo street concert that first summer we were married.  talk about fond memories. and by the way, i sure miss our provo house.  anyways... this phone had some cons... short battery life (because it was so old) and that even if the phone was on silent, if that play button got pressed in my pocket or purse, it would blast out chris merritt.  which seemed to keep happening at very inopportune times.  like a baptisms and such.  or when i was leaning over the crib to place my drowsy babe inside... BAM!  CHRIS MERRITT!  and baby startled wide awake.  anyways... the main plus side was that a dance party was only a click away, and i really enjoyed that it was an extremely easy phone to text on.  oh wait... maybe the biggest con ever?  it was made before texting was big so the inbox held a grand total of... wait for it... 56 texts before it would start rejecting messages and telling you to clear out your inbox.  chris had some texts on that phone "locked" that couldn't be deleted... so really i only had space to receive about 30 texts before i had to start deleting them to clear more room.  that took more time out of my day than picking out what clothes to wear.  which trust me is a lot.  because i HATE picking out clothes in the morning.  loathe entirely.

anyways, i was able to overlook those cons and appreciate that i had a working phone.  i just kept brainwashing myself that i must have the easiest phone ever to text on.  my life with this est. 2006 phone was great until one april morning about two weeks ago, when my phone stopped making sound.  it wouldn't ring, it wouldn't alert me for texts, it wouldn't make a noise if i set the alarm to wake me up in the morning.  and if i made/answered a phone call, i couldn't hear a single thing coming from the other end.  it was a phone that couldn't make phone calls.  but at least i could see missed calls and respond with texts.  if i needed to have an actual conversation with someone i could either use honey's phone in the evening, or if it was family/close friends, we would just skype.  it actually was only inconvenient a handful of times.  one being that one of my best friends, jodi, doesn't own a cell phone because they give her migraines.  she only has a house phone... which doesn't text.  the only other annoying times were twice when i had a back and forth text conversations with christopher that took ten minutes when it could have been replaced with a 20 second phone call.  other than that, i really didn't mind not ever hearing my phone ring.  although i will say one weird thing is that it wasn't completely mute.  it would ring if my christopher called (he had a different ringtone than everyone else) and it still would blast chris merritt in awkward situations.  i asked my mother to send me her old razr phone asap monday morning.  because honestly, it's really scary knowing that if something happened to your child, you'd have no way to call 911.  it came in the mail wednesday afternoon (having a mute phone for almost a week, this was SUPER exciting!)  i literally tore it out of the box, and flew out the door to hit up the verizon store before our relief society activity.  it took about 10 mins to transfer activation and contacts and i was out of there.  when i asked the guy why the sound only worked sometimes he explained that it was a software error but that since the phone is so old, they don't make software updates for it anymore.  bye bye honey's 2006 phone.

hola mom's old razr.

this is actually the third razr phone i've had in my lifetime.  the first one was pink and i was in love with it.  like IN LOVE.  it fell in the toilet.  i was so sad and crushed that honey surprised me with a new pink razr off of craigslist.  after using it for a long time, the screen went haywire and i had to get a new phone... i think that's when i got the sway.  ANYWAYS... this was my phone from last wednesday night until this morning.  not even a full week.  i was very grateful to have a phone that had sound but three things about this phone absolutely killed me.  first, it used iTAPEN to text... not word.  for someone that's been texting with word for the last several years, this made my texting about as efficient as a 90 year old on an ipad.  also, there was  a six second delay between the time you pressed a button and the time the screen changed.  my phone would make a little ding, i'd see that the screen said "message from _____" and click okay to view.  an then i'd wait. one, two, three, four, five, six... actually, maybe it was longer than six seconds.  and if you really want to know how long six seconds is... watch it tick away on a wall clock.  like a little miniature eternity.  anyways... when i thought the suspense was just too much to bear, the message would finally appear.  you think this is something you'll get used to after a day or two.  i am here to tell you that is not the case.  it is actually just the opposite.  anyways, the third con... battery life... go figure.  just because it was so old it needed to be charged twice a day.  once over night and then once during the late afternoon.  so the max it could be unplugged was about 7 hours.  not at all inconvenient.  regardless, i am extremely grateful to my mother for lending me this phone... i appreciated it while it lasted.  which as i said was about 6 days.  because after our young womens kickboxing activity last night, i had to stay for a youth conference meeting.  and i had baby girl with me because honey's out of town.  well, she was doing really great on my lap for the first half hour but then got anxious and fidgety.  i don't know if i had my phone in my hand or in my lap or in my pocket or what but at one point, baby was squirming on my lap and the razr phone fell to the ground.  the back popped off and the phone turned off.  with most phones, this is pretty common if it's dropped.  so i picked it up, popped everything back in place and turned it on... the keypad lit up but the screen did not.  and has not since.  i could answer incoming phone calls but without a screen couldn't make outgoing calls, see missed calls, text, or do anything else.  having a phone without sound is infinitely better than a phone without a screen.  

so this morning we went to the park with friends from church and although it was hugely inconvenient that i wasn't able to text anyone that i needed to, it was once again the panic that, in an emergency, i wouldn't be able to call for help.   i went straight home (i was in such a hurry that i left abigail buckled in her car seat in the garage while i ran upstairs to look for more phones.  we have a plastic bucket upstairs where we keep random electronic stuff like old phones.  rifling through there i found my old samsung sway that i'd completely forgotten about!  i grabbed that and its charger, got in the car and went straight to verizon.  it was almost 12 30 which is creeping up on lunchtime but i wasn't worried because last time it only took ten mins to activate a different phone.  well, for other random reasons, it took over an hour inside the verizon store and multiple calls to customer service from both of my parents as well as the verizon rep helping me.  baby girl did great but i definitely had a headache when we walked out at 1 30.  it is no simple task to entertain a toddler in a verizon store for an hour.  but i have a functioning phone now (i'm sincerely hoping the battery life is not as terrible as i remember it... although at least i'm in the habit of twice a day cell phone charging now) and i'm thrilled!  because as stated before... this is a cute little phone, it texts with word, and i think i'm going to love it.  so let's just all pray that i'm not cursed and that the software on this phone won't give out anytime soon.  because as i'm sure we can all guess... they most likely don't have updates for the sway!

i kind of feel like i need a family tree or ancestry.com or something to showcase my cell phone lineage.  until they invent that sort of thing, this picture will have to suffice.  the cosmos begat the mp3 flip phone, and the mp3 flip phone begat the razr, and the razr begat the sway.  and thus ended the ten weeks in the spring of 2012.

although i find this a little amusing because it was actually the low battery life sway that begat the cosmos.  so is the circle of life cell phones.

so there you have it, as promised in this post (which was, ironically, before this most recent phone break), my rant about cell phones.  and in case it wasn't clear, i will clarify that we don't have a house phone so my cell phone is my only phone.  and if there was ever an emergency, it is my only way to call for help.  no working cell phone = no way to dial 911.  so, for safety reasons, i make it a point to always have a sufficiently charged and working cell phone.  

friiiiiiday

last night baby girl threw up.  it was a bit of an ordeal for both of us because i had to completely strip and redress the crib, completely strip and redress my baby, wash her hair under the faucet in the bathroom sink, and beg her to get a drink of water before getting her back to sleep.

and then i don't remember anything else until i woke up in my bed at TEN FORTY to the sound of my baby upstairs yelling at me to come get her.  can you say YIKES?!  i need to start setting my alarm because holy cow baby girl's morning and nap wake up times are pretty jacked up right now.

anyways, today was absolutely gorgeous, so instead of eating normal breakfast inside, i grabbed a biscuit for me and a banana for baby girl and we sat out on the back patio and basked in the sun while we started our day at 11 something.  it was glorious.

my mother in law called/texted my sister in law and me to invite us for a last minute lunch, so i hurried and put clothes on and baby and i met up with them and enjoyed a super fun girls lunch at johnny carinos (loooove that place).  on the way home, we stopped by the park for a bit and then had lunch and naptime.

honey got home at 5 today!  FIVE O CLOCK!!!  couldn't even believe my eyes when i saw that.  it was wonderful.  we hung out outside with our neighbors for a bit while baby played sidewalk chalk with the girls nextdoor and then we went on a family bike ride while the sunset.  

and then we went to roller hockey practice.  honey's littlest brother is playing on a team and honey is actually coaching the game tomorrow.  baby and i didn't really care about the practice so much as hanging out with my mother in law.  we had a blast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now we're exhausted.  so SHHHHH.... 

 

it's time to go to sleep.