Totally Random & HEY! is that Big Bird?

I am, apparently, losing my mind. For one, this blog post will be so random, you won’t be able to tell which way the turn is coming up. Second, I’m forgetting things. Normal things. Not things like the capital of Vermont or what the current price of a stamp is. What is it again? I forgot to give Leah breakfast. We dropped Trey off at school and about ten minutes before we were to reach the preschool, she says from the backseat, “mom, I’m sitting here quietly, waiting for my breakfast.” Oh no!! Fortunately I had a granola bar and a bottle of water with me to take to work. That became her morning meal. A few weeks ago, I had to run to Costco for a few essentials. I stepped out of the car and noticed I had on two different flip flops. Oh yes. I did. One black, one brown. Now, my husbands 90-something year old grandma did something similar. She walked out of her apartment with two different navy blue shoes but she was 90 something!!!! I was super self conscious the whole time I walked through the store and was so glad I was at least wearing cargo pants and not shorts. Yes, I considered going back home to fix my shoes, but at $3.80 a gallon for gas in a huge SUV I decided to be eccentric instead of wasteful. The worst part? I had to go back and look to see if I’d already posted this story. Lastly, apparently I’ve forgotten a HUGE event. Did you know I had a baby? ME EITHER! But apparently I have because I keep getting things in the mail about my new baby, and congratulations, and coupons for formula and diapers and baby life insurance. Weird.

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Leah has entered the world of living as an animal. Every day she is something other than a human. She is either a cat whose name is Autumn, no wait, Princess, um, how about going between the two constantly because she can’t make up her mind. And then she meows. And she talks in meows and has to translate. Then she expects me to do the same things to her, that I do to the cats including rubbing my fingers together to get our actual cat Autumn, to stand on her hind legs and reach up for me. When she’s not a cat, she’s a dog. Lollipop the dog. And she wants to play fetch. With markers. All the stinkin’ time. I give in, because I know her little brain is just working away and this is normal but sometimes she just needs to be Leah. She and I had to go grocery shopping the other day and while sitting in the cart she told me she was sick. A sick cow. I looked at her a little cockeyed because this was a new sentence. She then said, “cough, cough, cough, mooooooo.” It was so out in left field I had to laugh. She then proceeded to be other animals that were sick. A dog, a cat, a horse, a sheep. I really wonder where she pulls these things from, it’s definitely not from Trey.

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I think part of problem with losing my mind is that I’m living in Dante’s Inferno. You know, where every time you think you’re getting close to the end, you get pushed back to the beginning? When Bill left, he was supposed to be on a six month deployment. His original return date was September 15th. Ok, no problem. Well, there’s this guy who thinks he is the Marine Corps god and decided to make our family’s life harder and keep Bill out past the first of October for fiscal year reasons. Ok, I dealt with that. It’s a little long to explain, but it has to do with reenlistments and paperwork and deadlines, etc. Saying that, Bill is perfectly capable of doing all of this work he’s doing out there—from here. Do you know how many people have asked me why he’s actually there? They find out what his job is and can’t imagine why he’s there in the first place. In the famous words of Monica from Friends, “I KNOW!” Anyway, that moved our return date back a bit. Then….THEN I get an email telling me that this same self-named Marine Corps deity has decided that Bill will not be coming home on the date he said he could earlier, but has to wait again, for another flight out a week later. This man is just a big ole meanie! He’s power trippin’ and I hope that when he joins the civilian work force, his boss is a big ole meanie to him, too. Immature? Perhaps, but karma gets ya every time.

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So I’m tying up this post by saying…I can’t remember what else I was going to write about. I know there were other things, but I have lost my mind. It’s on vacation without me and I’m here trying to take care of my two kids by myself for the umpteenth time. Yep, if you add up all of Bill’s deployments from the start of this war, I’ve been doing it alone for two years. TWO YEARS! Ok, I’m off to get more coffee and get ready for church. Oh, and read the paper. That always makes me realize my life is pretty great.

Labor Day

I’m stealing this meme from Judy. You can go see her answers and the origin of this true Labor Day meme over at Where One Day Runs Into Another

How long were your labors?
Trey - 19 hours. Not the best day and a half I can recall
Leah – I’m not actually sure. It sounds bad, but it’s true. I think I was in the hospital with her around 2pm and she decided to show up not long after midnight.

How did you know you were in labor?
Trey - I wasn’t sure I was having contractions. I had to call my mom and she couldn’t remember hers. They started coming every 15 mins so I was pretty sure that this was the day.
Leah – I didn’t. I went in for a scheduled appt, told my midwife that I dreamt that I was checked by a different midwife and said I was at 5. My actual midwife got all excited and decided to check me and lo and behold…I was at 5. Weird, huh? She told us to go walk for an hour, but we had to come home and pack instead.

Where did you deliver?
At the hospital, both times.

Drugs?
Trey – I thought I would be able to make it without. I got to 7 when I was exhausted and couldn’t take it anymore so I got an epidural which was pointless because it didn’t work anyway.
Leah – I decided I wouldn’t torture myself and as soon as the anesthesiologist came around, I caught him and made him my best friend.

C-section?
Nope. Trey should have been though. He weighed in over 9 pounds.

Who delivered?
Trey – see, the thing with military is that you get who you get. I didn’t get my midwife because her shift was over so I got some dude who should not be around women—ever.
Leah – cutest doctor in history. Of course.