Loving that my girl likes being outside! On the way to the store yesterday, she was noticing all of the little water falls that pop up all over the place when we have heavy rain. So I decided to stop where I knew there was a bigger one so she could check it out. There are some old limestone caves there as well and she made a beeline for them! She thought they were the coolest things EVER. I always thought so too when I was a kid.










When I was able to drag her from the caves, we went to check out the waterfall. It had started to rain and the wind had picked up, so she wanted to go back into the caves! Haha. I was able to snap a quick pic and then it was back to the car! She was mad.. and she informed that I HAVE to take her back to the caves someday, with a flashlight so she can see the dark places. :)




I really cannot wait to take her camping and exploring! She is just going to love it when we can get out and actually do things with her! And we will have just as much fun!

I went to bed early last night, and had the most crazy, fantastic dream I think I have ever had. Of course, I remember very little of it now. I remember waking in the middle of the night thinking "Whoah! That was insane!! MUST remember that!!", before I drifted off back to sleep. Upon awaking, I remembered very little.

I DO remember that it consisted of me and T going to the ISS. Without a shuttle. LOL. We were in these pod-like things that got launched into space using a futuristic slingshot. It was WILD. It was FUN. When we got near the space station, the CANADARM reached out with these tentacle-like appendages and pulled us in.

Clearly, I watch too much NASA and too many sci-fi movies. Haha. I wish that I could remember more! I think we actually used the pod thing to go to the moon too, because I seem to vaguely remember scooting around the moon on a rover.

Yes. Imma dork. :O)

And my kid is showing a HUGE interest in space and the shuttle. She will sit and watch the NASA channel with me. So cool. She has these space flash cards that I had nabbed out the dollar bin at Target awhile back and she can tell you the difference between a comet, an asteroid and a meteor. She can name the planets.

She thinks it is funny that we live in the 'milky way', and she always asks if it tastes like the candy bar. A comedienne in the making?

I like it that M is interesting. She is quirky and silly and fun. I squished her much this morning, telling her what an awesome kid she is. She just smiled and said "I know mommy!"
Eep! I don't want to breed conceit. I just do not want her to ever have self-esteem issues like I have. I am almost 40 and I still have awful issues. I am working very hard to change that though.

Take this morning, for example. I slept great. I woke up to a gray, gloomy, rainy day. Usually that would get me down right away. But as I sit here and type, listening to the birds chirping happily outside, I REFUSE to let the weather get me down. Today WILL be a great day! I WILL get certain things accomplished! The first of which being coffee and a healthy breakfast!!

Be nice today for no reason. Do a little something unexpected for someone. SMILE.

:D

M has allergic rhinitis... or.. allergies. Both of her ears are good to go, but she is to take Zyrtec in the morning if needed, Benadryl at night, and we have to saline flush her nose at night. THAT is going to be fun. Oy. I also have a nasal spray for her if she needs it. We need to get her a warm-air humidifier for her room too. Not sure how we are gonna do that though. *sigh*

Since moving here, T has slept upstairs in the bedroom, and I sleep on the couch. He has severe sleep apnea, and while he uses a CPAP machine, it is not working very well for him at the moment. He needs a sleep study and we have to go to Pittsburg for that, over night. Again, no money to get a hotel and stuffs. So.. not sure when that is gonna happen. Also, the bed up there is a full size bed. Not nearly enough room, as he also has restless legs. He keeps me awake so I just sleep on the couch. Well, THAT has been KILLING me. I do not sleep soundly, I cannot get comfy etc.

So last night I dug out the air mattress and set it up in M's room. I was going to sleep on it in there but she decided she wanted to 'camp in'! We put her little tent thingy on it and she had a ball in there with her books and her flashlight! And momma got to sleep in a bed. All.night.long.

Seven hours of uninterrupted, glorious sleep. I feel like a new person! WOO! M slept all night too, for the first time in weeks. She did not wake up coughing. She slept soundly and is a ball of boundless energy this morning!

I left the kitchen a mess last night, which I never do.. because I was too excited to crawl into bed! So this morning, I came down and made coffee and cleaned up the kitchen. Then I sat outside with the Pea and watched/listened to the birds. It was about as perfect a morning as it gets. My momma being here could have made it truly perfect though. :)


How was your morning??

So, I am not so good at keeping up with the old blog. Sorry.

I had recently scanned a bunch of photos. And then T's step-mom sent us a TON of his baby pictures. Oy. Good LORD he was cute. *sigh* I am not gonna lie. I want another baby. Now, before everyone starts falling off of their chairs, I am not going to actually DO that. Just sayin'. I always wanted M to have a sibling and it just kinda stinks that things have gone the way that they have.

Anyway, I came across this one photo of T and OMG.. haha.. See for yourself...


That is T and his paternal grammy, and the pea and I on Christmas morning of 2006. They are roughly the same age in these photos. And people say she looks like me? NOT. LOL

Then, I came across this next photo. It is an old Polaroid. It has faded and changed to wonky colors and I did my best to fix it in Photochop.. however, my photo editing skillz are limited. What I wanted to convey with this photo, is the look on my dad's face. I saw this pic and CRACKED up, because I could just envision the scene.


My dad is out there trying to cut up fire wood, and my moms yelling at him to look at her. He in turn looks at her like "Dammit woman! WHAT do you want?? Can you not see I am trying to cut some damned wood??" Hahaa. It just made me smile.. and made me miss him even more than I already do. *sigh*
Also? If you look closely, the ever-present smoke is dangling out of his mouth, and he needs a hair cut. He looks a bit like a koala in this photo. LOL!

M is still sick. She has a cough that just will NOT quit. I have not slept through the night in about 3 weeks and it is wearing on me. I get an hour here, two hours there. UGH. NOT good for what I need to be getting done. I am going to sleep in her room for the next few nights, with medicine at the ready, tissues and a drink, and hope that I can get her what she needs without going into the kitchen and needing to put on a light and schlepping up and down the stairs 3 or 4 times. Because once I go through all of that, I am awake.

We are going to the Docs today. Hoping to get some answers...

That would be M using her sled as a shovel. That child was determined to build a fort. I need to find one of those block igloo maker things so we can make a REAL fort the next time we get a good snow. *sigh* I love her. :)

M woke me up at 4 a.m. this morning. She did not feel good. She had no fever, no cough, nada. I got her a drink and we snuggled on the couch. She fell back to sleep. I did for about 15 minutes, because then my neighbor was outside shoveling. He does this every time there is accumulation. He is well into his 80s, so it is impressive that he can get out there and do what he does. He has a HUGE driveway. He and his wife rarely go out. So WHY the need to shovel it at 4:30 a.m. is beyond me. What really sucks is when he breaks out the snowblower before 6 a.m.

He also has an awful cough. He often sounds like he is going to heave a lung right there in the driveway. It is hard to listen to. Ugh.

Anyway, M woke up again around 7:15 and asked for some juice. She still complained of not feeling good. She says nothing hurts and she has no fever, but now she has an icky cough. And I went up to snooze after T got up at 8, and I wake with full sinuses and a runny nose and watery eyes.

WHERE did this come from? We have been hermits for a week now!

Annnyway. It is snowing. Again. Heavily. And we have to head out because we are out of milk and butter and eggs and a few other things...

Until next time....

The snow has been unrelenting. It sure is pretty though. M went out to play today. The two things that she REALLY wanted to do? Sled and build a fort. Neither of which she was able to do. She plunked her sled down, and promptly sank into the deep snow. She tried and tried again, to no avail.

I told her that it was just too deep. So she decided to move on to fort building. That did not fare well either, as the snow was very light and powder-like. This made for a very unhappy Pea.
*sigh*

She got mad at me because I could not make the snow better for her to make a fort. Ugh. All I could do was bring her inside and give her cake and hot chocolate. Then we read some books, painted, played a game or two and made dinner. We were outside for about an hour and it tuckered her out.

I really wish that she would sleep in. But I am sure that she will be waking me up around 7 a.m., so it is off to dreamland for me!!

Someone needs to teach this kid of mine what SLEEPING IN means. Seven a.m. and she was waking me up. Grrrr. The first two things she asked for was cake and to go outside and play in the snow, neither of which are going to happen until after lunch. LOL.

There is a LOT of snow out there. I am only shoveling to the apartment downstairs and that is IT. It is still coming down hard. Sometimes, I cannot see the top of the mountain! I am hoping my neighbor comes by on his 4 wheeler to plow the sidewalk like he did the other day. That saved me some work!

I can smell the cake. I hope that I can wait til after lunch! Hahaa!!
I have some pics on my camera, but I just do not feel like dealing with it right now. I think I am gonna go plop on the couch. I will wake T at 8:30 and then I think I am making waffles for breakfast. mmmm.
I have to get the pics off of the camera before we go outside. I do not have a memory card yet and it can only hold 10 photos without the card.

Awrighty then, to the couch I go!

Two pictures today.

I needed to run to town today to get some things at Wally World. M was outside playing. I had been shoveling the back stairs (ugh) and the sun came out and there were big puffy clouds in the sky.
So, I shoveled. And it damned near killed me. So I said to T "let her play for a bit, I am running to the store."

I got into the car, and drove down the road and through our teensy little town. As I got the the road to head on out of town, I could not believe what I was seeing... I went from sunshine, to this in about 2.5 minutes..



UNREAL. You can barely see the mountain just across the river. It was coming down all heavy and crazy. I thought about turning around and heading home and then decided just to suck it up and go on. It was just a squall, and moved along rather quickly though, thankfully.

This second picture was taken yesterday as we played out in the snow. M had decided that she wanted to build a fort. So she marched on past us, went to the porch upstairs and came back down dragging the shovel behind her. T and I were laughing so hard. She was so determined to shovel some snow. We ended up being the shovelers, giving her a rather large mound of snow with which to forge her a fort. I LOVE her determination. She does not let ANYONE tell her that she cannot do something. :)

I love watching her love the magic of snow....

M has to have a blanket at all times. She is not specific, usually, about which one as long as she has one. So the one that she has been toting around for the last 2 weeks was gross. I tried to take it from her the other day to wash it and she was having no part of it. I had all of her other blankies out so she could choose one, and she flat out told me that she wanted her filthy, nasty blankie. Greaaat.

Last night, after she was asleep, I snuck in to her room and took that nasty thing and put it in the wash. I replaced it with a nice clean blanket and called it a night. This morning we were watching Clifford the Big Red Dog together before going out to the bus when she exclaims "HEY! Mommy! This does NOT look like my nasty, filthy blanket!!"

I am so glad that I didn't have to pee, because I would have busted RIGHT THERE. I REALLY had to work at not cracking up. I gently ignored her and said "Oh LOOK M, they are roller skating!" She didn't budge. She stood there, blanket in hand, staring me down. She repeated that the blankie in hand was NOT her gross blankie. I again said "Look! Roller skating!"

She narrowed her eyes at me. I grabbed her and asked for a hug. She obliged and we started talking about roller skating, and off to school she went with her nice clean blankie!

Crisis averted. For now. :)

Year in Review!

It has been a LONG year, yet it has sped by at ludicrous speed. Does that make sense? Most of you know the deal. Living with my mom, needing to somehow get back on our feet. We now find ourselves in WV, in my grandparents old house. We are settled in nicely. M is in school. T is working, I am trudging away with school. I love it here. Being here feels normal and right for me. T is still adjusting, but doing very well.

So I have to apologize. I promised everyone I would blog regularly, and I don't. You can thank Facebook for that! Hah. I am going to try to post each day (ha!) and I would like to post a picture a day too. I have attempted this before, and failed miserably, but we shall see how it goes. I have also decided that it has been way too long since I had my very own blog design, so I am thinking that is something that I need to do as well. I just use templates because they are easy peasy, and my creativity went out the door years ago.

So, some photos, yes?

We moved up here the day before Halloween. M was a witch, courtesy of my friend Penny, who brought the costume up for us to use!




We got to spend lots of time outside when we first got here. The weather was PERFECT!

















Then, we got our first snow!! M was just LOVING it!!








Then, it snowed again. And again. Aaand again. :)








Our humble abode...





Our neighbors... LOL.





Before we knew it, Christmas was upon us! We had Christmas Eve here, and Christmas day we were lazy. We went to my cousins for dinner. It was a really good few days, although I REALLY miss my mommy...


We also got legal. :)




Awww...





M and her cousins...



Petie and T ...






M got a sled from Santa. Best thing EVER. She had SO much fun!




She is such a ham, no?





And that is about where we are. Rebuilding. Living. Being happy. Adjusting.
So, blogging and photo daily..? Hah.. we shall see.

Happy New Year!!

*sigh*

I do not know what I am doing wrong. This kid does.not.listen. At all.
I will ask her, or tell her, not to do something. She will ask why. I give her a solid reason. She looks right at me and tells me she is going to do it any way. I have tried time outs. I have taken things away from her. I have threatened. And yes, I have spanked. NOTHING works. And before anyone jumps on me for spanking. It was a spanking with my hand. I do not beat my child. You may not agree with it and that is ok. It was a last resort.

I cannot just throw my arms up in defeat. So WHAT do I do? She is turning into a nasty little thing and I am at my wits end.

She is awesome at school, or when she is over at my cousins house. I know she is supposed to test boundaries and all of that, but DAMN.

I have already made up my mind that tomorrow, if she flat out refuses to clean up her playroom, she will wake up the next day to an empty room. I will bag it all up and put it downstairs. And maybe even give the stuff away.

I have so had it already.

I love her more than anything. There are certain things that I want to teach her and I am failing miserably.

UGH.