Saturday, August 31, 2013

pizza deliciousness




check out this pizza delight! please also note the massive size of it all. i have the best recipe for homemade pizza. like sauce, dough, all of it. it takes a couple of hours from start to finish - you know waiting on the dough to rise and all that good stuff - BUT, it's totally worth it if you have the time. you're supposed to make several small pizzas from it, but well i thought one gigantic pizza bigger than the size of my pizza stone sounded like a great idea :-) i rolled up the edges (b/c it was in fact so oversized) and made a nice thick crust. bub and i devoured a good chunk of it last night and there are lots of leftovers for lunch today.

its been another long week around here. but it's ending on a positive note. i mentioned in my last post, but the Lord continues to speak tons of peace into our lives. we continue to be amazed by the kindness of others. words of encouragement and offers to help have really given us extra encouragement. i know jobs for the both of us are on the horizon.

in an effort to make a little cash to buy the kiddos fall/winter wardrobes i've started selling stuff on ebay. i've sold tons of textbooks through their other site half.com, but its been years since i sold anything on ebay. literally. i was updating my account and it had my maiden name on it and an address that i lived at with my sisterkins before we both marred and moved. i've already sold my first item and i'm hooked! bub better watch his stuff, i'm liable to snap a pic of it and post it up for sale :-P

and i'll leave you with this gross little snippet... we got some decent sleep last night - five hours i guess, but still in the fog of waking up this morning i managed to grab a dirty bowl out of the dirty dishwasher and proceeded to eat my cereal out of it. i didn't even realize it was dirty until i got to the bottom of the bowl and realized there was pizza sauce from dinner last night all over the outside of it. uh, GROSS. mama made herself a big old pot of coffee after that. it is time to wake up! oh and yes, i immediately ran the dishwasher!


Wednesday, August 28, 2013

potty training 101

guys - nuggie is potty training. awesome right? kinda sorta. look, i'm all for her getting out of diapers, BUT good golly it's like a million percent more work around here these days. every 15 minutes it's,

"do you have to pee pee?" "do you need to potty?" "let's go pee in the potty"

and then there's the

"mom, mom, i HAVE to pooooottttttyyyy" and "mom, mom, the pee pee is coming out!!!!!!!!!!" and the "NNNNNNOOOOO" when i ask her if she has to pee as she's holding her knees together and doing a weird squatty dance.

there is pee everywhere. like everywhere. all over the bathroom. all over my living room rug. all over all the clothes. everywhere. by the end of the day the child is usually naked as a little jay bird b/c well, it's just easier.

and oh good heavens, don't get me started on the circus that is the child having a bowel movement. it takes about 4 tries of running back and forth, sitting on the potty, nothing coming out, her freaking out that nothing is coming out, getting off the pot, running back to it and then she has to find lovie (her little tattered blankie that goes EVERYWHERE with her, apparently even to the toilet so she can poop) and then bury her head in it and let the glorious poo experience take place. 

she's getting it though. she really is. she made it to church and back and stayed totally dry and used the potty there. we've made a few other trips out and she's stayed dry too. today, the big test - off we went to preschool in her big girl undies. and of course we get stuck in some nasty traffic on the way there this morning. the whole time i'm thinking, "don't pee, don't pee". and you know, she didn't. and she came home with only two pairs of wet shorts. not too bad really.

so i'm doing laundry like 18 times a day now and poor doodle gets laid on the bathroom rug while i'm helping nuggie up onto the potty. and i'm not doing much else during the day now but asking the poor thing five hundred million times, "do you need to potty?" but she really is doing it and i'm super proud of her. she's getting too big way too fast.

ok and look ---
this will change your potty training life. for real. we had the grubby little potty chair in our already too tiny bathroom and it was gross. and i was gross. and everyone was gross. THEN, we talked to some friends of ours who shared with us the wonderfulness that is this combo toilet seat. guys, hello - its got a kiddy seat built in to it. no dumping buckets of pee and poo into the toilet - she can just use it and flush it and life goes on. if you're needing to potty train a kid soon - run, RUN i say and purchase this for your toilet. you will not regret it.


Tuesday, August 27, 2013

on a lighter note...

so the last entry was a little dark. and i'm sorry, but kind of not. i used to journal. like all.the.time. and as a busy mommy, i rarely have time to sit with my notebook in a quiet place and write. somehow typing away on here just seems easier... so many people reached out with kind words of encouragement and i truly appreciate it all. bub and i both just had a really rough time of it last week and i was feeling so discouraged. at church on sunday it felt like the Lord was speaking peace into our lives, even in the middle of this. and that has helped so much.

the thing is, i didn't expect our life to look like this right now. like at all. we've been hanging on by a thread the last couple of years, trying to get me through nursing school. using student loans to fill in the gaps that me not working left in our budget. we looked forward to the day when i'd be employed and we could do things like go to the grocery store and not worry so much about the price of a box of cereal or you know, maybe have the funds to replace the 13 year old car sitting in our driveway. but instead we're even worse off. what kind of a nurse can't find a job?!?  but you know, it really will work out. it really, really will. life never goes how we thought it would. sometimes that's good and sometimes it's bad. right now is sort of a bad time, but it could all change in an instant. and it will. so until then i'm going to try my best to be positive and trust that it will all be ok.

alright - so that said - let's get back to some fun chit chat.

first, our oven nearly crapped out on us today. and after everything i was like - ok, seriously. now? the heating coil thingy literally melted in half. what? i never even put the darn thing about like 400. i'm too scared to broil things. i've always been convinced i'll burn the house down that way. how does it melt? and of course it was just as bub popped a giant raw chicken into it. thank you Jesus (seriously) for friends who know things about things. we know a guy who was able to talk bub through what needed to be fixed. he ran down to the parts store, grabbed a new coil and $40 later it was good as new. side note - the chicken was amazing!

second, we found the biggest. scariest. most giant-ess (that's a word, right???) caterpillar/grub looking thing EVER this morning in our garden. oh, my poor, sad garden. it all started and then died b/c i just couldn't keep up with it. so we were all out there cleaning it up and trying to get it back in order when we saw it. i was convinced it was a lizard tail. we've got mosby, the vicious hunter cat (ok, he's not really vicious at all - but he does bring all sorts of dead treasures to the door step) roaming around. uh no, it's a caterpillar and it's gross and huge and sitting in a tupperware in my kitchen right now. i'm a super nerd and sent a picture to some know-it-all at UT trying to figure out what it is exactly. Pita (my momma) is a super garden queen and she thinks it's a tomato hornworm. it's huge. i said that right? i'll let you know what they say!

third, can i brag on my baby boy. i know - it's like a cardinal sin of parenthood. you never, ever, EVER brag about how great things are, b/c as soon as you do all hell usually breaks lose. but c'mon, i have to. he's the best. he's got to be the most chill, happy, laid back little dude. he's so smiley and wonderful. we are so so blessed by his happy addition to our family. a few things though. he sleeps in the kitchen. yep. in the kitchen. why you may ask? why is my baby tucked away with the blender and the crockpot? b/c we're all sleeping this way. with nuggie i was so wound up about where and how and why she was sleeping and you know what, the girl STILL didn't sleep. she didn't sleep through the night routinely until she was nearly two. was she in her crib every night? yes. but you know what, we were all still exhausted. this time around i've taken a totally different approach. our babies are good. like really good. and for the important stuff i'm being firm and that's that. other things though, like tucking doodle in with the pots and pans (ok, not REALLY people, calm down) i'm totally fine with. nugg is a light sleeper and doodle is still up every 3-4 hours to eat, so he can't go in their room yet. he's also a noisy little sleeper, lots of grunts and snuffles and squeaks. so when he was in our room he was keeping bub and i up. so a new plan was made and now we're all getting the best rest we can for right now. i'm learning that being a parent is so much more about flexibility and going with the flow rather than following the letter of every parenting book. we know our babies better than dr. spock or sears or whoever.

ok, and finally... miley cyrus? really? maybe i'm just getting old, but seriously - someone tell that girl to put away her foam finger, put on some clothes and quit "twerking". which i had to look up, b/c i'm that old and didn't know what the hell that even was.

Friday, August 23, 2013

so many lemons...





i've been wanting to blog for a while now. wanting to write and get some feelings out. i've tossed the idea around. maybe i over share? maybe this makes me look less like the adult of a certain age i'm supposed to be? maybe a potential employer will search me out all google-style and find this and never hire me? maybe my kids will track this down and be embarrassed by their mother's rambling? i don't know. and honestly at this point, i don't much care. life is hard. it is. and i'm an over-sharing loony. so deal. it's therapy for me to write and journaling just isn't my thing anymore.

so here we are. about six weeks since bub got the big boot from his job. and we're all scared. worn out. on edge. what's going to happen? what will we do? we've both hunted down jobs all across the country. no one wants us. a move is most likely on the horizon for us. nashville is just proving to be a wasteland where job seekers of our sort go to hang in breeze like a bad pair of mom shorts on a clothesline. all awkward and ugly just hanging out there. not wanting to be claimed by anyone. and my heart is broken. while moving is in fact something we've tossed around in the past, the idea of it going down like this literally hurts my heart. nashville and i have been together for 12 years now. 12. that's longer than i've lived anywhere. it's my home. everything that is important to me has happened here. i met bub. our first date. our wedding. our first home. our babies. all of it. and now here we are, about to be forced out to who knows where. i honestly thought i was doing a smart thing becoming a nurse. i thought i'd have no trouble at all finding work. obviously i didn't expect to walk out right into my dream job, but hello. i'm a nurse. what sort of a nurse can't find work anywhere? me i guess. and bub, his line of work is tricky and kind of hard to come by.

we have to take care of our kiddos. and soon our little stash of emergency money will be gone and we'll be left with nothing. so a decision has to be made. what kind, i don't know. i keep praying about it. people keep telling me it will all work out. i'm not so sure folks. i know alot of people in the Bible who were believers who had their lives literally crumble around them. will my babies and i end up on the street? lose the little we hold so dear? i don't know. i know i want to stay here. i want to work. i'm a hard worker and not afraid to do what needs to be done. i want to raise my babies in the place that has made me who i am. i want them to know the beauty that is a spring morning in tennesee - the dogwood flowers and pear blossoms. i want them them to walk downtown and giggle during CMA week. i want them to stay in our church and know our friends and eat biscuits at the loveless. i want to drive them around and show them the school where mommy and daddy fell in love.

my heart is sad and i don't know what to do. i want to blame the people responsible for this. but i know that does no good and they don't care. we were so close to finally. FINALLY. getting things together. and now we're back to nothing. only this time we have two tiny souls to care for. two HUGE reasons we can't mess up. so i guess if that means a move then we move. whatever it takes to care for them.

my heart is sad friends.