Freebird is still happy and eager to wake up at 3am and start COUNTING TO TEN AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS OMG. This has yielded two very tired parents who wake up and have no choice but to listen. He’s not crying or anything. Just counting. Over and over. Until he goes back to sleep.

I think we need earplugs that exclusively filter out the counting. I bet Sesame Street makes them. Right? RIGHT?! 

This is the link that caused Hubby to go into convulsions. He laughed so hard he had to sit down. TWICE. TWO SEPARATE TIMES he fell over giggling at the thought of this chair taking up residence in our home.

Man, it’s almost tempting to get it and see if the top of Hubby’s head comes off when he laughs at the real live version.

Last night I got the urge to make a dish I hadn’t cooked in at least a year - spicy peanut soba noodles with chicken. YUM.

This morning I got up, and despite low blood pressure had the urge to cook some more, and made oven-puffed pancake with sliced fruit for breakfast. Again, yum.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but my urge to cook is in high gear like damn. 

Last night Hubby and I had an outstanding dinner, reminding us both that (a) we need to take advantage of Parents’ Night Out at our daycare more often and (b) really good food is so much fun to eat and talk about. The place we ate last night was just incredible, and we loved it. All these little touches - silverware we’d never seen before, tiny salt dishes with tiny spoons, and an amuse-bouche of cucumber-wrapped seared tuna with wasabi crème fraîche. While we love fine dining, it’s not something we can make a habit of. Next time we might go for the local Ethiopian place, or something much more lower scale. But gosh dinner was good.

And then this morning, we met with the architect with preliminary designs for our home - we both agreed easily which one we liked better, so next up our nice architect dude is going to draw up a three-dimensional computer model of what we want to show us how the whole thing will actually look. He also did designs for a second addition to add a master bath and closet suite to our existing bedroom, but we don’t think that we can swing doing both at the same time. The kitchen alone will be a big kahuna of a project.

All this fine dining and house renovation is making me seriously think that we need to win the lottery or something. Maybe a dumptruck of money will park itself in my driveway. That’d be awesome. 

Yesterday Freebird came home from daycare wearing a change of clothing (note to self : time to send daycare a pair of shorts for summer change of clothes!) because one of the teachers was cleaning the lunchroom and hadn’t rinsed the chair yet, and another teacher put young Mr. Bird in the chair. His blue shortalls? Stained with bleach on the tush so now it is a funky shade of orange.

I’m not upset - accidents happen, which is why we send him to school in clothes that aren’t extremely expensive or hand-wash only. Most of his clothes come from outlet malls - though they are nice items of clothing - and we fully expect them to get dirty and grubby. I’m thinking I might take diluted bleach and a paint brush and try to turn the bum stain into a cloud and then “draw” with bleach on the hem to make a “design” of sorts. The shortalls are cute and if I can change them into something somewhat funky instead of obviously stained, I will.

But then, when I get invited to a party selling children’s clothing for $40-60 an outfit, I feel badly because there’s no way I would spend that on an outfit for Freebird unless I knew he could wear it multiple times - and frankly the events to which he’d wear a nice outfit are few and far between. Even if the outfits are really really precious and so soft and comfortable, and really, so creative and obviously made by talented people, I always figure that’s the day when there will be a mishap with a bit of cleaning solution, and oops, bye bye outfit. And even if it’s not cleaning solution, it’ll be ketchup, dirt, marker, mud, something - maybe washable, maybe not. 

So I stay put as a cheap mommy who buys nice things at outlets, knowing that someday, I’ll have to buy a suit for a bar mitzvah or something, and that’ll be plenty to spend!

Every weekend I have big aspirations for my self and my ability to get things done, but those aspirations only exist during the week. When the weekend actually rolls in? I’m worse than a slug. Even if I make a list, I just want to curl up and read, snooze, relax, and do as little as possible. But then, I get ideas, crazy ideas, on Thursdays and Fridays. On Saturday, I wonder what I was smoking.

So I hereby present the What Was I Smoking list of things I’d love to accomplish but probably won’t:

1. Grocery shop for (a) weeknight dinners, (b) lasagna to make ahead and freeze for later this year, and (c) lunches for the weekend.
2. List on eBay the approximately 4500 things I’d like to get around to selling.
3. Mail the return package to Lands End that’s been sitting on my console table for about 3 weeks (*shame!*)
4. COOK lasagna for make-ahead-eat-later freezing frenzy that hasn’t started yet but probably should.
5. Clean out office, or at least PART of office to turn said office into Other Room.
6. Sleep.
7. Maybe go Do Something with Freebird and Hubby, like take a hike in the woods or play in the water. Daytrip to beach, optional.
8. Sleep.
9. Read.
10. Write review (or two) and work on other projects.
11. Sleep.

Most likely I will accomplish #8, 9, 6, and 12.

Hubby and I never, if ever, travel on weekends when everyone else is traveling. Memorial Day, Labor Day, July 4th - we stay the hell home. We hate traffic and crowds - he hates the traffic while crowds make me twitchy - and we kind of like being home when everything is a just a little less crowded. It’s like August in Manhattan, the single greatest time to be in NYC ever. It’s hot and muggy and it smells like something died but NOTHING is crowded. It’s fantastic.

However, even staying around home, I’m rather excited for Memorial Day weekend. Tonight we go for my checkup at the midwife’s office, which involves Freebird playing with any number of awesome toys, such as a model of a uterus or a giant sample of the NuvaRing, and listening to the heartbeat, which is my favorite part. Tomorrow, Freebird’s daycare is holding a Parents Night Out, which means they stay open until about 10pm so parents can go out. Hubby and I are taking advantage and going out to dinner while the Bird plays with his friends and hangs out at school.

Then, we don’t have a whole mess of plans aside from cleaning out the office (which is really a giant repository of books we are loath to throw away but don’t actually READ) during Freebird’s naptime, and relaxing as much as possible. But since the weekend is starting out with a heartbeat visit and then dinner out, I’m pretty darn happy.

Now, if only I could figure out a way to get rid of onion grass.