Living room makeover

When the Christmas tree came down, our living room looked like this:

Bare and uninspiring.


Step one was to rearrange the furniture.

Better already 

During the snowstorm at the end of January, I made a slipcover for the rocking chair, which was very comfortable, but nevertheless driving me crazy with its forest green next to our red couches.

The room redo may not have taken me 2 months if certain forces had not been working against me.

I covered the piano bench as well, made drapes, bought lamps, and put up these nifty decals from Etsy.

A new throw, a few pillows, and a couple of plants later, and... Ta-Da!

Comfy, cozy, and enough light to read a book under that fuzzy blanket.  Ahhhh.

Catching zzz's and catching up

Possible reasons I haven't been writing much include:

It's March.  The winter blahs are dragging on me heavily, keeping me in bed later and later and generally making me unproductive and uninspired.

We've had several field trips--including one yet to happen--that require advance planning, babysitter arranging, and a pileup of schoolwork on one hand, and a long day of driving and sightseeing and being an all-around extra-responsible adult on the other hand.  

I've been unaccountably tired lately, nodding off during read-aloud time (when I'm the one reading aloud) and surviving until the next chance I can sleep.  Possibly this means I'm trying not to come down with whatever is causing the gobs of snot running down the faces of several people I live with.  For other possible explanations, see above.

What have I been doing, if not blogging or napping more than should be necessary?

School, of course.

Trying to convince Caleb that he's not a blue princess, as he insistently claims.  

{I can't even blame my fatigue on him, since he's been sleeping fine lately.  He doesn't cry when he goes to bed; he just sings in chant to put himself to sleep.  If you listen carefully, it's a great window into his psyche.  Last night it was, "I'm a blue princess.... I am, I am....."}

I took the kids to help serve a dinner at the Salvation Army shelter, thinking it would be a good object lesson in thankfulness for what we have.  It was wonderful to see them serve the residents, but my intentions may have backfired.  "It would be great to live here!  They have a TV, and restaurant food, and a Coke machine!!"


Some of us have spent time trying to figure out how to fit four small humans in a giant box.

I attempted to up my running game by tearing 6 laps around the park one day.  I impressed myself with the resultant 5k time... but shortly after succumbed to the aforementioned chronic fatigue.  I suppose "overdoing it" may also be an explanation, although since then I've spent the kids' naptime, well, napping, rather than running.

I'm still working on prettying up the living room in my snatches of spare time.  It's frustratingly slow, but Jason often reminds me that I have higher priorities--and besides, it's better for our budget if I don't have time for a shopping blowout every week.

{We also did our yearly standardized testing last month.  The results are in, and we're unarguably doing something right in the realm of academics.  This, Jason points out, is proof I'm succeeding in (one of) my day job(s).}

The house-beautification effort led me to Lowe's, and through a chain of happenstances, I ended up there with two small children, my shopping finished, waiting to be picked up by Jason.

Thankfully, Lowe's has lawnmowers.

And kitchen appliances.

Caleb:  "Where's all the food?"
He later concluded that "somebody took all the food," likely a monster.

And walk-in showers.

Also, Lowe's has toilets.  Floor models, sitting right out in the open.  I foolishly pointed them out, and Caleb said, "I go potty!" and rushed across the path of other shoppers, followed by me, shouting, "No! No! No!"

I'm pretty sure after that I went home and took another nap.

Aquarium

On Monday I sent Lizzy and Caleb to Grandma's house for the day, and took Jeddy and Ada to the National Aquarium.

The steamy Amazon rainforest exhibit was a particularly nice place to spend a late winter day.

Although theoretically icky and certainly undesirable to swim with, the jellyfish were surprisingly beautiful and mesmerizing.

And sharks!

And lots of fish.

 

And gigantic jaguar-print stingrays.

These weeny little frogs were about one inch long.  So cute!


(Poisonous....but so cute!)

We got to touch these non-stinging jellyfish.

And a ginormous turtle, probably as long as I am tall.

He's friends with the jaguar stingray and this shark.

Also of special interest to the kids was the plethora of escalators in the aquarium, and the ice cream treat afterwards.  A cool field trip, indeed.

Rehab

On Thursday I brought all my kids on a field trip with our homeschool group.  

We went to a wildlife center, where injured wild animals are rehabilitated and cared for.  The children learned to care for our environment for the sake of these wonderful creatures, some of which as majestic and special as this bald eagle:

And that's about as much as I learned, because Caleb spent the whole time trying to throw rocks at the animals.


Sigh.


We're in the midst of another bout of bad sleep with him.  He yells and cries at all hours, and I feel braindead these days.  Last night he was up making noise past 11:00, and by 5:00 this morning he was crying out again.  I blearily went in, retucked his blanket, gave him a hug, and then went back to bed to watch my clock until the alarm went off.  When I had gotten myself ready and went to get the kids ready for church, I found this angelic scene and about wanted to kill him:

Note the broad daylight.

I wish I knew what to do to get the boy to sleep at night, not only for my own sake, but so he can revert to his happy, charming, self-controlled self--instead of being the one kid who throws rocks at suffering wildlife.

Making closure

Jason and I were enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning with nowhere to go when we received a pair of notes slipped under our door.

Sarcastic much?


We've decided to call off the endless saga of Ada's head lumps.  Though unwilling to make an official diagnosis, the last specialist we saw (the specialist one of all) did at last give us the name of a condition--one with an entry on RareDiseases.org, no less.


Subcutaneous granuloma annulare is a rare form of a condition you've never heard of.  Other forms cause rashy skin lesions, but this form apparently causes weird lumps that make every doctor in the state scratch their head, but will cause no harm and eventually go away on their own.


So we've trekked all over the place, reviewed waiting rooms all over the region, and racked up some more pretty medical bills to learn a fifty-cent word and decide to do nothing.


To be less cynical, we also performed due diligence to be reasonably sure our second child doesn't have a malignant tumor.


Which is a good way to spend time and money, if somewhat anticlimactic at the end.