Time to Get Real

Lily has been sick for the past week so I'm pretty tired.

It's helped me learn to be more patient with her, though, and try to be more sympathetic to how she's feeling.

She's never been this sick before, or, if she has, she's never been this vocal about it before.
After 5 days of constant whining, crying, and not sleeping you start to go sorta crazy.

She's starting to get better now, so that's good, and I can finally get some real rest.



We went to Tampa for the weekend, which was probably a bad idea with a sick child.  Friday night we put her to bed at 9:30, and she just cried and cried.

You see, Lily soothes herself by rubbing a specific corner of her blanket on her face while sucking her thumb.  If she can't breathe through her nose, she can't sleep.

Eventually she did fall asleep, only to wake up at 1am and not go back to sleep again until 5am.

So, that's lovely. We paid $$$ so we could go to a hotel and stay up all night long.

Party.


To be honest, I got the same amount of sleep as I would any other normal night. Which isn't enough. But nobody really wants to hear about that.


The next day we bought some Benadryl-D and drugged her up with that so she could breathe out of her nose. Surprise, surprise, she slept all night.  Poor little thing.  She just wanted to suck her thumb!


Anyway, other things we did in Tampa was visit the Hard Rock Cafe, we went to Apollo beach, and we went to TGI Friday's.

We didn't do much, really I just wanted out of the house.

Walk? She says. She likes to walk!

...and walk.  PS: Lance reminds me of his dad in this picture. Bending down to pick up something off the floor. For Jerry, that was usually a coin or something.  I miss Jerry.

...and walk!

I had to snap this really fast, because she was about to head down the stairs which end IN the water.  Not quite warm enough to go swimming! (65ish degrees with a bit of a breeze.)

There was a girl in the water with her GIANT great dane, and there was a stingray floating nearby them.  When the girl got out of the water, the dog came running over to me, and even though I'm not afraid of dogs, it made me really nervous.  It was tall enough, on all fours, to stare me straight in the eyes.

I'm not very tall, but for a dog to be nearly five feet tall while it's on all fours is like DAAANNNG!

And also, yes, we saw a stingray!  Pretty cool.

And more walking. :-)

So yeah, quick trip to Tampa.  Tampa is only about an hour away, depending on how far into Tampa you go.  The beach was another 15-20 minutes from our hotel.

But yeah, I wanted out of the house. We have one car, which Lance takes to work, so I'm home with Lily all day long, every day.  When Lance gets home we eat dinner, clean up dinner and then I work all night long.  I go to bed around 2 or 3 in the morning, and then start the routine all over again.

It's a very boring, not to mention exhausting, existence.

My house is dirty and gross 99% of the time because during Lily's nap time (my only real time to myself) I'd rather put on makeup than clean or take a nap.  Although some days I DO take a nap, but I'd rather have me time than my own nap time.

I do my makeup, but neglect my hair. I don't really go anywhere so the whole physical appearance thing is like: Why? Because I like makeup, that's why!

I do get Lily to help me put away her toys before nap time, and Daddy (sometimes) gets her to do it before bedtime.

Sometimes I do dishes, sometimes I don't. Lance will do them occasionally, if I ask him nicely.

I don't really watch TV, but I do let Lily watch TV.

I tried starting to teach her lessons out of the same manual as her church lessons come from, but she gets angry at me and just cries when I try to get her to sit with me and listen to a story.  I want to keep trying, but when I'm tired and grumpy, it just causes me to be unnecessarily harsh with her.

One thing that I have gotten better at since being in this no-car situation is making dinner and not going out to eat.  I'm actually super proud of this. I make dinner Sunday-Thursday, and we eat out Friday and Saturday nights.  I've gotten better at sitting down to plan a menu and grocery list, following through with the actual grocery shopping, which I hate, and actually cooking at night.

It is probably because if I don't buy groceries on Saturday, I will not have food while Lance is at work.

Lance SO doesn't care if the house is messy or if dinner isn't ready when he gets home. He just cares about seeing me and Lily. It's a double edged sword, really, as well as being the reason I've been a terrible homemaker for the past 6.5 years.  But I'll keep him. He's great!

I'd like to take some pictures of where we live to share with ya'll, but I haven't gotten around to it.  Next time I take Lily on a walk I'll try to snap some pictures.  It really is lovely here. It's green still. Yes, in January!  It's pretty warm, but it does get cold. For a while there I was having to turn on the heater at night, but then turn the A/C back on during the day.  Our windows face the sun, and we're on the second level.

Summertime will be a ...

Joy.