Still here. Come see me at jenhamrick.xanga.com... Or stay here and read my archives, if you're really bored. :)

blah blah blah blah blah. blah.

Trying to keep this account. 'Cause who knows when you might need a blogspot account, right? so.
If you found this as a result of some freak accident, come see me at xanga. I think it's something like http://jenhamrick.xanga.com. Something like that. Anyway. That's all. I have to go get under Thomas's tent. He's begging me.

And Aunt Martha slept through the whole thing...

It's been a loooong morning for only being 7:54. About 4:45, I woke up just 'cause it was hot and decided to get a drink. Met Jarrod coming into the kitchen. He said, "What are you doing here?" Apparently it wasn't obvious by the pop can I was holding to my lips. Anyway. Witty banter. Bedtime. A few minutes later, "SCREEEEEEEEEEE!"

Our carbon monoxide detector went off. Lovely. Jarrod got up and checked it out. Plugged it into pretty much every outlet we have. "SCREEEEEEEEE!" every time. Consistency is overrated. So we opened windows and the back door, and we decided we'd better not mess around with this, especially given our recent history with the minor gas leak and my sleepiness and breathing problems. So I woke up Thomas, who somehow slept through the "SCREEEEEE!"ing, dressed him, and took him outside. Jarrod came out, too, and called 911, and the first few times, the call didn't go through. Scary. This is exactly what always happens in my nightmares.

Finally, "Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?" just like on TV. Next time this happens, we'll tell them we're all safely outside except our giant Aunt Martha, who won't wake up. Instead, it was many chilly moments later before we saw the ambulance coming down the street. Out jumped two twelve-year-old fireboys with what looked like bed-head. "Hey, how's it goin'," one asked. Well, we're not dead, so... good, I guess.

"At least," Jarrod pointed out, "they're big enough to carry us outside if we had needed it." Um, me and Thomas, maybe. You and Aunt Martha gotta fend for yourself, buddy.

They went in and checked the air quality and said it was fine and we could go back in. Said our detector is just old and went crazy. They apologized for the delay, saying they had just come from a fire, and normally they wouldn't be so dirty, either. I said "That's okay," but that was before I saw my kitchen floor. No, really, it's okay. If I had white carpet instead of broken, already-dirty, used-to-be-white tile, I'd have been mad-- mad meaning crazy for putting white carpet in my kitchen. Anyway.

After the fireboys asked to borrow a pen so they could fill out the incorrect form because they didn't have the right one, they left, and a great sigh of relief was heaved by all the barefoot, nightshirted neighbors who had been peering through their blinds since the ambulance lights first glared into their windows. We at Hamrick House sighed too, and stripped back down to our knickers. All except me. I got a shower, got dressed, and started my day. And except for Aunt Martha, who slept through the whole thing.

Hmmm...

I don't want to leave blogger... but xanga is so easy to post to facebook, and I couldn't figure out how to post blogger to facebook. The last two blogs I've written, I have done so first on xanga and then copied and pasted here. Anyone have a better idea? (Not that you'll read this, since I'm only posting it here, on blogger, the Dead Zone.)

Long Days on the Prairie

So here's what I was thinking as I was lying in bed this morning at 6:20, unable to go back to sleep because Thomas was awake and kept asking for stuff and I was debating whether I should just get up:

Why on earth does it get light so early and stay light so late? I mean, I know why. (Just kidding. I don't know why. I know it's something having to do with the earth and the sun and all that, but frankly, I never understood it. And I don't really need to.) My real question is, what to do about it?

Back in the day (and night), when people farmed for a living and did not have electricity, they got up and went out to the fields when it was light, worked til it got dark, and went to bed. (I'm guessing. I wasn't there.) When it was winter, they just tried to make it through to another spring without freezing to death. (This is based on some Little House on the Prairie reruns I saw when I was a kid.) (Oh, and I read the books, too.)

So why don't we take that approach now? I realize it might be the wrong time to bring this up. Winter would be much easier now, since we have TV and heat. All we'd be required to do is hunker down, watch the Soaps, and sleep away the long nights. Mmmm, now doesn't that sound nice?

The difficulty comes in the spring and summer. These days, with their fifteen hours of sunlight, energize me (heck, I cleaned my bathroom the other day!), but it's hard to keep going until it gets dark. And I'm certainly not going to let Thomas stay up from 6 am til 9 pm. As if he could do it. He'd try, but the result would be unpleasant (read: miserable).

As I said before. I need curtains for his room. Maybe, though, I can manage to keep him on a sensible schedule for a two-year-old, despite the sunlight, and still take advantage of the situation myself. I don't have chickens to feed or crops to harvest (not REAL ones anyway!), but my kitchen could use a good scrub.

One Down, Only 5600 to Go

Operation Napless: Day 1 was ruled a success. I'm sure not every day will go as well, and not every day will continue to be napless. I am prepared for this. I was just so happy yesterday to be able to avoid the post-nap grumpiness that seems to be a habit. The only problem was that at 8 o'clock sharp, I said, ok, time for bed. And he was incredulous. He said, "Mom, is it dark out?" Like, it can't be bedtime if it's not dark out! --which, of course, it wasn't, at 8 o'clock at the end of April. This may be a problem. I may need to get some curtains for his other window. He's got blinds on one but the other one is up high and faces west, and the waning sunlight can stream right in.

Ugh. It's seven. "Naptime is over," as he will be surely telling me any second. I've got a diaper to change and apple jacks to pour.

Let me just say: ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHH!!!

Okay, so he's 2 1/2 now. And the Terrible Twos started at 1 1/2. So it's been a year. He's put in his time. I've certainly put in mine. Aren't we done with this yet? Surely it's not going to continue into the Terrible Threes. Is there such a thing? Goodness, I hope not. When he was a baby, and he cried all the time, and never slept, and basically acted like he hated me for bringing him into this world, I actually wished that the doctors would find something wrong with him that could justify his behavior. But no, he's just a normal child. Then he was a normal, grumpy, sleepless baby, and now he's a normal, grumpy, sleepless two-year-old.
Frankly, I dread every morning because of the battle that I know will take place. If I finish getting ready for the day and he is still asleep, I spend my time praying that he will keep sleeping for a little while and that when he gets up, he won't be a tyrant. Doesn't usually happen.
He refuses to let me change his diaper or change him out of his pj's. I don't mind so much if his diaper is still dry and we aren't in any hurry to get dressed and out the door. This is seldom the case. Anyway, his diaper fills up fast, and it's just easier to dress him right away rather than wait and then hurry up and do it when we're ready to go somewhere. I don't understand what is so terrible about a clean diaper and clean clothes. I thought maybe it was a power issue, not wanting to let Mommy do everything for him. So for a while I let him undress and dress himself, but I found that if it's up to him, he just won't do it. It's just a no-win situation.
So what ends up happening is I physically restrain him and dress him while he cries and I almost cry. It's hard, and unpleasant, and he has bruises.
Okay, and now he is demanding that I put his socks on. Hm. I think I already-- yes, I already put them on and you took them off.
Oh, now he's pulling my pants off.
Now my sweater.
I'd better go put his socks on, or at least act like I'm going to until he changes his mind.

He's Yours

Maybe this will work this time. Ignore Mommy in the background.