Happy (Belated) Birthday, Audrey!

My big girl is five! She was so into her birthday this year. Asking for weeks, "how many days until my birthday??" and in the week preceding, telling every single person she passed that her birthday was coming. When it came, Andy marvelled how, after opening her presents, one little person could uniformly scatter stuff over the ENTIRE surface area of our family room in a matter of seconds. She's so thoroughly messy! I guess she's consistent!

I told her that I was sad that I don't have a baby girl in the house anymore. She said, "that's okay, Mom, I will still be funny."

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In other news, I have got to be queen of crazy gym injuries. And not the typical knee or ankle injuries one might expect at a gym. Oh no, not me. Two weeks ago I nicked my finger with my wedding ring and it was bleeding all over the place while I tried to run. Today I had to cut my workout short because, while running on the treadmill, I knocked my finger against the bar and it quickly turned into a giant purple nightmare. Thankfully, it's my pinky finger, so I will still be able to paint my mural Saturday, but aye aye aye, does it HURT.

Shopping Spree

I finally got a chance to do a little splurging! I still had a hard time with it. I have no problem over-spending at the grocery store, garage sales and restaurants, but when it comes to big-ticket items, I suddenly lose the ability to spend money. It's just so hard for me to see all those dollars disappear at once. It makes no sense, really. I mean, how do I justify spending $40 on a meal out when it's digested w/in 24 hours, but I can't bear to spend the same on a dress which I will wear for years?

At any rate, we got a good tax return this year, and Andy got his bonus, so we each got some money to play with. Andy promptly sped over to the music store and bought himself an electronic drum kit. I have my money allotted to several different things. So far I have purchased: A Kitchen Aid mixer, a new kitchen table and six chairs, a new ottoman (to replace the one I have which is so filthy I'm afraid it can never be clean again), a set of curtains, an entertainment center for our family room, five pairs of shoes, a cutting board, paints, and lots of new clothes. And, most likely, I will be going to Arizona with Ashton and Cole in two weeks!

I don't know which purchase I find the most thrilling. I love the idea of a kitchen table which actually seats the whole family and the meal we're eating all at once. I love that I can have an entertainment center and curtains in our family room and feel like a grown-up...right now we have a long row of furniture and a TV stand and I find it to look a little like a dorm room or a first apartment. I am tickled to pieces to soon own a kitchenAid (it's coming in the mail), because you all know of my current cooking kick. Shopping for clothes, while not exactly fun (unless you call "fun" trying on 30 outfits while Cole screams his lights out and two other kids are running around outside, threatening to open your curtain and very possibly someone else's too), was exhilirating because, while I haven't lost any weight in ages and ages, I must be re-distrubuting because I was happily surprised to find that things fit. I can't recall when I was last in style. Now I have pointy-toed shoes, chunky necklaces and those little sweaters that end just below your boob. Totally stylin'. :-)

To be sure, I did 90% of my shopping at second-hand stores. Can't take the cheap out of me that easily. Heck, the stuff I bought at regular stores was all from clearance racks.

So that was my shopping spree. Not bad for 3 days. And I'll end here so I can go vacuum and try to recover from all that sticker shock, and maybe even try to placate my restless baby.

Serves Me Right

...Going to McDonalds right before I head to the gym for a workout!

I didn't go totally overboard (though I probably snuck a few too many fries from my kids' happy meal). I got a grilled chicken club and removed 90% of the mayonaisse, and a diet Coke. But it was the Diet Coke that got me into trouble. As I was trying to get through the door to the play area, tray in one hand and carseat in the other, my Coke fell off the tray and landed on my baby, icy cold liquid swiftly emptying all around his head and pooling into the bottom of the carseat. Poor guy. Thankfully he was wearing lots of layers and had a blanket with him (that didn't get wet) so I was able to strip him down to a (coke-stained) onesie and his blanket, and go to the gym without returning home for a new outfit.

I have a new little personal fitness goal. I ran 3 miles in 36 minutes the other day (down from 38 minutes a few weeks ago). My goal is to complete 3 miles in 33 minutes by May 1 and 30 minutes by June 1. Think I can do it? I hope so! Now, if I could only stop eating myself out of house and home I'd be well on my way into tank tops and bathing suits in public.

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So Cole is 5 months now. And OH, how I enjoy this age so much more. He's smiling at me and talking to me all the time, and he's understanding cause-and-effect more, so he sees that if he makes his mouth into a little circle and hoots like an owl, Mommy might just mimic him and what a fun game that is! Must repeat over and over! He's very tactile and is always rubbing my arm or holding my hand or trying to put any available Mommy appendage into his mouth. He's still super-intense, though. He's not overly generous with smiles (especially not for the camera) but he'll study you until you're sure he's poked a hole though you with his laser-beam stare. I love that all my kids have such distinct personalities, and I can't wait to see how it all pans out as they grow.

Ashton has been slightly less pleasant than usual these days. He seems intent on stealing Cole's binky about ten thousand times a day and when he doesn't get his way, he's perfected his tantrum-throwing skills and the art of saying "No" with a dramatic toddler flair, melting into a pool at my feet. I don't give in (most of the time) but oh, brother. I get a lot of Mommy-guilt about this, because I do know and understand that Ashton is simply having a very hard time finding his place in the family. He tries to keep up with the older kids (lately he's been a little parrot, copying EVERYTHING they say and do), and he tries to stay a baby. I feel terrible because he really needs some special time, and nobody ever has a chance to give it to him. On Wednesdays, when I'm at Bible Study and the older kids are at AWANA, Andy takes Ashton to McD's to play, and I know he loves that, but I can tell he needs more.

Hopefully I can afford to fly him (and Cole and me) to Arizona soon.

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So, this summer, in true Sally style, I've planned to vacation for several days with complete strangers. It's a family from the internet and I'm actually being commissioned to do a couple of murals for them. But since they live across the state, we're going to take the family and stay in their camper in their yard, and they will keep us entertained and show us the sights and sounds of their town while we're there. Afterwards, we'll take the ferry from there to Wisconsin, and go visit my sister in Madison. I think it sounds great (and CHEAP!) and my family just does NOT vacation enough.

Well, I suppose I've rambled on enough for today. Don't be shy - if any of you ever have a comment, feel free to post!

Pictures

I'm Pooped

I'm just soooooo tired. For a good reason. I had a very productive (and slightly profitable) couple of weeks and finished almost everything on my to-do list, including keeping up with laundry (one load a day) and committing to doing the dishes at night instead of leaving them in a huge mountain in the sink for the morning. (this is great because I DO not like not being able to fit my coffee carafe in the sink because of all the dishes) I painted and shipped all those letters and sold quite a bit of artwork at the Mom 2 Mom sale, and I scheduled a mural for the end of this month. I worked out every day this week, which I have to do to offset the insane amount of eating my nursing body seems to require. I've baked for bible studies, cleaned out the basment, started sorting stuff to sell at my summer garage sales. Now it's Saturday, I'm feeling blah, and I'm looking forward to getting my impending workout over with so that I can spend an hour in the bathtub with Cole and read my Cooking Light magazine.

This morning I ordered eBay for Dummies (the starting an eBay business one), because I would really like to jump on the letter-painting bandwagon. I'd like to branch out to other items, but letters would be a good start. And if anyone wants to give me advice on the best way to go about making a website (creating websites for dummies?), I'd like one of them too. But I stink at that computer stuff. And I don't have any money to pay someone else to do it...or I would. Believe me.

Okay, well, time to go face the dumbbells and suffer through a strength training class. And break up the brawl that just occurred between daughter and son.

Can't be Upstaged

So I'm sharing some of my own artwork - what I've been doing for extra cash these days.

Per Audrey's Request

More artwork.

A girl and her all-weather snowman (special purple snow is impervious to the warm weather)

Spongebob and Patrick catching jellyfish

This one features Audrey and Wesley (who looks awfully surprised) at her birthday party.

Audrey's Artwork

This is a girl holding an umbrella in the rain. I asked Audrey if she was sad because it was rainy. She said, "no, she's sad because she couldn't get her hair right today."

This is our family. I'm holding Cole, see?

Predictablity Would Be So Nice...

Forget crawling, rolling over, sitting up, clapping, pincer grasp. Those are great and everything, but the real milestone I'd like Cole to reach is the ability to post an agenda each day to let me know if Driving Momma Nuts is on the schedule or not. It would be so nice if I could wake up in the morning, check the chart, and see that Cole plans on taking a nap strike and nursing for 2 hours straight, fussing every time I put him down for more than 2 minutes. I could plan my day accordingly, and make sure to get my chores done quickly and early so I can spend my time nursing and watching TV (Food Network of course) in the afternoon. At night, I could check and see that Cole was planning on sleeping 11 hours straight. Then I could stay up a little longer, talk to my husband (*GASP*), watch a later TV program, do my Bible Study. If the agenda revealed that this would be a "cry and nurse every hour all night long" night, then I would go to bed early and say lots of preemptive prayers for sanity and energy.

Cole is such a sweetheart. He is an active little fella, and he chuckles all the time and craves attention and pays attention to everything. But he is SOOOO indecisive. He simply cannot decide if he wants to sleep 8-11 hours straight or wake up screaming every hour. He can't decide if he wants to be content in his bouncy seat and smile or suddenly get incredibly unhappy and cry the very millisecond he's put down. I keep saying that Cole has just gotten his birth order all wrong. If he had been my first child, he would have gotten all that luv and attention that he demands. As the fourth, he's often left to sit in the bouncy or swing and let one of his siblings entertain him while mom runs around like a crazed idiot. And, as the fourth child, he has very, very, very strong opinions on why this arrangement does not suit him in the least.

But he's SOOO stinking cute.