Category Archives: Single Parenting

how we do Easter

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Easter weekend was supposed to be Dave’s weekend on the calendar, but since it isn’t a huge holiday for him, and because of other logistical issues (his girlfriend and her kids were in town visiting for a few days, and he had to take them to the airport early Sunday morning), I got the kids back on Saturday night, and was able to spend most of Easter Sunday with them.

Catie still believes in the Easter bunny (I know, my days are numbered on that one, but I’ll drag that out as long as I can), so she was excited, but Lucy was kind of confused by the whole, “Da bunny comes in our house? And then he comes into my bedroom?” thing. No, baby, the Easter bunny doesn’t go in your room. He just puts stuff in your Easter basket and leaves.

Still, Easter morning rolled around and I got this picture, which basically sums it up. Catie is ecstatic, Lucy has what is quite possibly the best “WTF?” face I’ve ever seen.

Lucy got into it eventually. She loved that the Easter bunny brought her a “Frozen” book.


“I like her!” (points at Anna)

And she really liked the bird from Rio.

Catie was pretty happy with her prizes too. The Skylander was the main highlight, but the Easter bunny is wise and knew to get two identical Blu plushes so there wouldn’t be any fighting over it. (Plus they were only $5 at Kohl’s.)

Later, we got dressed and went to church with my parents. Catie wanted to stay in “big church” with us, which was fine. Lucy said she wanted to go to the nursery to play with the other kids, but once she got there, she balked. She cried and said, “I stay with youuuu!”

I told her that if she came to church with us, she’d have to be very quiet and still, and not make any noise. She said, “I be quiet, I be good, I not get in any trouble!”

And really, she did great for 40 minutes of a 50 minute service. Then she started to get squirmy, and when I told her to stop, she started to cry, and I took her outside. We walked laps around the office hallways of the church while we waited for the service to finish.

After the service was over, I found my parents and Catie in the lobby, and this very nice lady took our picture.


Nice tongue, Lucy.


My dad is blinking, but at least Lucy’s tongue is inside her mouth, and oh hell with it, I give up.

We went back to my parents’ house, and Chris came over to join us for lunch. It was too muddy outside to do the kids’ Easter egg hunt there, so we sent them up to my parents’ bedroom to “hide their eyes” while we hid eggs around the house.

(I know some people hide eggs the night before and say that the Easter bunny hid them. We don’t do that. Don’t know why, this is just how we’ve always done it in my family.)

Chris wisely pointed out that we should have the girls start hunting on opposite ends of the house, to ensure that Lucy would have a chance to at least get a few eggs before Catie mowed her down. It worked, they both found eggs, and there was no fighting or crying.

Later that afternoon, I dropped the girls back with Dave (since it was his scheduled weekend), and Chris and I pretty much fell asleep on the couch watching Netflix.

Overall, it was a really nice Easter. Hope you all enjoyed yours too. (And even if Easter isn’t your thing, hope you had a lovely weekend.)

random funny things my kids say

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I realized that a lot of times, rather than blogging, I’ll put a quick status update on Facebook or a tweet of some funny thing that my kids have said, because it doesn’t feel like enough to make a blog post. So I thought I’d throw together some of my favorites and make it into a blog post. If you’re Facebook friends with me, you’ve probably seen this already. Oh well. Here it is anyway.

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Coming downstairs one morning, I ask the kids what they want for breakfast.

Lucy: “COOKIES!!”
Catie: “No, Lucy. We aren’t at Daddy’s house. We can’t have cookies for breakfast here.”

(Yeah. The ex got a text about that one.)

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There’s a lady at our daycare, Miss Sandra, who gives all of the kids Spanish lessons once a week. Catie started taking Spanish lessons from her when she was three years old, and said she prefers Miss Sandra to her Spanish teacher at elementary school.

I learned recently that Miss Sandra is now teaching Spanish to the toddler class. I asked Lucy what she knew how to say in Spanish, and she said, “Wayne-oh dias!”

Close enough, baby.

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Related to previous anecdote: Miss Sandra at daycare is also in charge of food prep in the kitchen, and she serves all the kids their lunch and snacks. Catie has told me, “Mommy, Miss Sandra makes THE BEST peaches. You really should get her recipe.”

Right. I’m pretty sure Miss Sandra opens a can and spoons them into a bowl, but whatever you say, kiddo. Apparently Catie prefers canned peaches to fresh.

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When I pick the kids up in the evening, on the drive home, I ask the girls how their day was. If Catie says a word, Lucy starts yelling, “STOP TALKING, CATIE! STOP TALKING! I TALK!” When I finally say, “Ok, Lucy, what did you want to say?” She says, “Umm… nuffing.”

Two year-olds, man.

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Lucy’s take on the various hairstyles around here: “I have yeyyow hair, Catie have yeyyow hair too, Mommy have brown hair, and Chris have nekkid hair.”

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Catie was playing her Skylanders video game on the Wii, and I guess some new monster popped up on the screen, because she mumbled to herself, “What the hell is that?”

I said, “What did you just say?”

She looked kind of startled and said, “Um… oops?”

I couldn’t even get mad at her because she said it pretty much exactly the way I say it, and I know she got it from me. So I told her that it’s kind of inappropriate for kids to use words like “hell,” and it would be nicer if she said “heck” instead.

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Dave texted me that Lucy punked him. I asked what he meant, and he said that she ran into the room, yelling, “I pooped! I pooped!” (She’s potty-trained for peeing completely, but poop is still pretty hit-or-miss.) Dave saw that there was a big lump in her pants, so he figured she had an accident and went to change her.

When he pulled her pants down, an Angry Birds action figure fell out of her underwear. Then she laughed at him, like “Haha! Made ya look!” And she ran off.

I… don’t even know where she came up with that. I asked if Catie helped set that up, but apparently she was working on an art project in another room and was nowhere near Lucy at the time. I’m kind of impressed.

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Another text from Dave was this quote from Lucy: “Mommy have big boobs. I have no boobs. Daddy have the BIGGEST boobs!”

Yeah, I’m just gonna put that one out there and leave it alone.

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Catie was moaning about trying to figure out how to spend her birthday money, and she sighed heavily, “It would be nice if everything was free.” Awww, my little budding Communist.

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A few weeks ago, Lucy saw me in the morning and said, “Oh no! You have a boo-boo on your face! Poor Mommy!”

It was a zit on my chin. Thanks for that, kid.

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We were watching stuff on YouTube, and I showed them the video for “Take On Me” by A-Ha. As soon as it was over, they asked me to see it again. Considering Catie’s affinity for other 80s music (Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, “Eye of the Tiger”), I’m going to consider that a sign that I’m raising them right.

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Lucy is currently obsessed with watching the Muppets on YouTube. It started with just their take on Bohemian Rhapsody, but now she’s really into any videos that involve either Beaker or the Swedish Chef. They happen to be two of my favorites anyway, so again, I’ll take it as a sign that I’m raising them right.

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Catie recently lost her top front tooth, and she asked if the Tooth Fairy is real.

I asked her why she would think the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, and she said, “Because fairies don’t live in North Carolina!”

I said, “Well, maybe the Tooth Fairy just travels a lot.” And then I changed the subject and asked her what she was going to do with her $1 that she got.

I know her days of believing in magic are numbered, but I’m kind of ok with dragging that one out as long as I can.

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Last week, Lucy ran in the room and in sort of a “nyah-nyah-boo-boo” sing-songy voice, said, “Mo-ooommy! I didn’t choke!” Which of course just led to suspicion, because wait, why are you telling me this? What did you swallow that you weren’t supposed to swallow?

It was gum. Which she is not allowed to have. She stole it off my desk.

Again: two year-olds, man.

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Those girls. They crack me up, I tell you.

emerging like the flowers in springtime

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Oh hey, poor little neglected blog of mine.

I feel like I’m just coming out of a fog. The past few weeks at work have been intense. My boss warned me to expect my workload to get really heavy around the end of February, but I didn’t really know just how involved it was all going to be. For the last few weeks, my life has looked more or less like this on the days I had the kids with me:

* Get up, get myself & the kids dressed, get them to school/daycare.
* Come home, sit at desk, work work work.
* Pick kids up, feed them dinner, bathe them, and get them to bed.
* As soon as the kids are asleep, sit back down at my desk and work until 2 a.m.
* Get up at 7 a.m. and repeat.

On the days when the kids were with Dave, I’d just roll out of bed, plop at my desk in my PJs and work straight through until 2 or 3 a.m. There were days (DAYS!) without showers. I’m not proud.

It was insane. There was one other co-worker who was doing a lot of work on this same project, and we’d be sending each other emails in the middle of the night to check in. When we finished this project last week, he emailed me and said, “I feel like I just survived a war with you.” (Obviously an exaggeration, but… yeah.)

The weird thing is? As exhausting as it was, and as stressful as it got at times, I really loved it. I’m fortunate to have a job that I genuinely enjoy, and I loved feeling like part of a team effort, and getting positive feedback from manager-types that they liked what I had done.

So, everything officially finished and “went live” online last week. I took most of this week off, and I’ve been a lazy bum, and it has been glorious. I found a Groupon deal for a massage, which I desperately needed after sitting at my desk for so many hours (my shoulders were in knots), I got a haircut, I took naps. The downtime has been really nice. And hopefully when I get back to work on Monday, the pace will be a little more normal and not quite as frantic as it has been.

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The downside to the crazy workload is that I felt like I was neglecting everything else in my life: my kids didn’t have my full attention when they were here, and Chris and I didn’t get much time either. So I’ve been trying to make it up to them.

Last Friday – the day after my project finished – Catie’s school had their annual Fun Run, and it also happened that daycare was closed for a teacher workday. So I kept Lucy with me, and we went to Catie’s school to watch the Fun Run.

Lucy and I found a spot where we could see Catie as she ran by, and she could high-five us as she passed.

Since people can sponsor the kids based on the number of laps that they run, they cap them at 35 laps. Catie ran 37 – the extra 2 were just for fun. She’s a better runner than I’ll ever be.

(It’s worth noting that because of my job, I almost never get to see these types of things, so this was a really special treat for all of us.)

After the Fun Run, Lucy and I headed up to my office (funny that I have a cubicle there, even though I mostly work from home) to pick up some Girl Scout cookies that one of my co-workers was keeping for me. Lucy had never been to my office before, so that was kind of fun. I had told her that she’d need to be quiet so she wouldn’t disturb anyone. As we walked through the office, she kept loudly stage-whispering, “We hafta be quiet so peoples can do their work!” Yeah. Nice job there, kiddo. Let’s grab our cookies and get outta here.

It was a fun day, although it sort of emphasized to me what it probably feels like to be a stay-at-home mom on an average weekday, and I realized that life is not for me. It feels terrible to say, but as much as I love my kids, I’m a much better mom when I get a break from them. (Plus the fact that I really do like my job, which I think helps.) By 6 p.m., I was tossing back Advil and ready for bed. I don’t think I could be a stay-at-home mom every day. Hats off to those of you who do it.

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As long as I’m blogging about things that happened a week ago: last Saturday, we finally had some really nice spring weather, and my dad and I took the kids to our nearby greenway to let them ride their bikes.

Catie, my ever-cautious girl, won’t let us take the training wheels off her bike yet, but she’s getting a lot better at riding independently and not being scared of her bike, so we’ll call it progress.

When I mentioned taking the training wheels off, she said, “maybe next year when I’m 8.” Ok, baby, whatever you say. I’m not really in any big rush to make her hit those big-kid milestones before she’s ready.

Lucy, on the other hand, very much wanted to steer her tricycle all over the path, and she was a little annoyed that Pop-Pop had the handle in back and kept making her go straight and not veer off in front of random joggers and their dogs.

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This weekend, the girls are with Dave, and I have absolutely nothing on my agenda. It feels foreign and strange and lovely. I’m planning to go for a long (or longer than usual) run, then hit up my local drugstore in search of Easter basket treats and a new mascara. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, I gotta say.

quick updates

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So, I think I sort of forgot about my little blog here for a while. Here’s a recap on the major stuff that’s been happening around these parts:

Lucy and sleeping

Well… I guess it’s sort of better? I mean, she still wakes up at night and comes into my room and wakes me up, but she just asks me to tuck her back into bed or take her to the bathroom, she understands that she can’t get in my bed until morning. We have one of those day/night clocks in her room that’s blue at night and turns yellow in the morning when it’s ok for her to wake up, and she gets that. “I stay my own bed until my clock be yellow!” That’s right, baby. I mean, it’s lip service, and she doesn’t actually stay in her own bed until her clock turns yellow, but maybe after enough repetition, she’ll get it.

So, I guess we’ll call it progress.

Potty-training

I don’t know if I’ve really written much about potty training this time around. It was so awful with Catie, and I was dreading doing it again with Lucy. And, I think we’re basically… done? I mean, the other night, I heard her little feet scurry to the bathroom and her tiny voice call out, “there’s no toilet paper here!” And I realized that she hasn’t had an accident in weeks, and I think she’s pretty much got it nailed.

So, ok, fine. I know I always think of Lucy as my difficult child, especially when compared to my super-cautious Catie, so I guess we’ll file “relatively easy to potty train” as a win in her column. Although I think most of the credit goes to daycare for this one.

Visitation with Dave

Everything seems to be fine. There’s some adjustment, sure – Catie in particular is testing his boundaries, but I think that’s normal given the circumstances. But the back-and-forth has been pretty smooth for the most part, and getting those extra few nights of sleep is the BEST.

Catie and school stuff

Catie is still really resistant about reading and spelling, and I ended up talking with the head of the English department at one of our nearby high schools, who said she has “teacher cadets” (students training to become teachers) who help struggling students. And it counts toward their volunteer hours that they need to log for college, so it’s free. I’m so incredibly grateful for the help, I’m starting to feel like this might be a really good way to reach Catie. She’s always eager to please “older kids” – particularly teenage girls (like our baby-sitter) – and I think this might be the best route for us. Fingers crossed.

And when she gives me attitude about homework, threatening to take away her video game time is usually a pretty swift way to correct that.

Girlfriend loves her gadgets.

My job

Work is good. My boss warned me a few months back about a huge project that’s going to be launching in early March, and he made a comment about, “don’t expect to have a social life in the second half of February.” And he’s right, it’s been really busy, but it’s been a GOOD busy. A lot of times with my work, I feel like I’m kind of a one-person shop. But right now I’m feeling like I’m an essential part of a team effort, and it’s been both stressful and really good for me, if that makes sense.

Chris and me

All is well. Since Dave has been around, we’ve been able to have a few nights here and there that are just us, which has been lovely. I’m a big fan of “date nights.”

We also do our fair share of slothing around in our sweats watching shows that are completely inappropriate for children on Netflix when the kids are with Dave. That’s pretty fun, too. (Finally just started watching House of Cards, for example. Oh, and the Dracula thing with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers – that was free on demand, not Netflix, but still. NOT appropriate for kids, yeesh.)

So, yeah. Life’s pretty good here for the most part.

this is sewious

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Dave has been in Seattle for the past week for work stuff, which means I’ve been back in full-time single mom mode. Which is fine, it’s certainly not like this is something foreign to me that I’m not used to handling. But I guess I’ve gotten used to having those couple of nights a week where I know I’ll get a good night’s sleep, so it’s been rough trying to re-acclimate.

The problem is, Lucy still doesn’t sleep through the night. And yes, I know, she’s over 2 1/2 years old now. But every night, without fail, she climbs up into my bed, snuggles in between me and Chris, and spends the rest of the night kicking me in the ribs or grabbing fistfuls of my hair. And I’ve put up with it forever, but the other problem is that I hurt my back around Christmastime, and it’s been bothering me ever since. So when Lucy was waking me up at night, it took forever for me to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep.

So, I decided that I’d had enough and was going to attempt sleep training Lucy again. Side note: this is almost a year exactly after I paid a professional sleep coach to get Lucy to sleep through the night. Which, as lovely as she was and I have no doubt that she’s good at her job, it really didn’t help our situation at all.

Only now, Lucy is almost old enough that you can bargain with her. And remembering how well bribes worked on Catie, I figured this was worth a shot.

First, I had to get Catie to agree to my plan. I have boxes of Catie’s old toys in storage, things she’s outgrown and Lucy has never seen. We dug through the boxes and found a plush Ming-Ming from the Wonder Pets doll.

ming_ming

Say what you will, I love that damn duckling.

I told Lucy that I had a special present for her that she could keep in her bed with her, but that it meant that she would have to stay in her bed all night or else I’d have to send it back. I showed her the doll and she went nuts, and I reminded her, “But remember, if you want to keep her, you have to stay in your own bed, or else I’ll have to send her back to the Wonder Pets.”

And she’s been… well… better. She still comes in my room every night, but it’s usually just that she wants me to tuck her back in, or I get the classic, “I need to go potty!” or something like that.

But she clearly understands, and repeats back to me, “I stay in my own bed ALL NIGHT so Mama be happy for me.” (Where “happy for me” equals “proud of me.” Same difference.) And even with a couple of wake-ups per night, she’s generally staying in her bed until at least 7 or 7:30 every morning, which is way better than how it was going before, so I’ll take what I can get.


I still maintain that this child is damn lucky she’s cute.

Oh, and about my back? I made an appointment with my chiropractor, and after two adjustments, I feel about a thousand percent better. So, go figure.

All good things, progress-wise.

P.S. If the blog title makes no sense because you’ve never seen the Wonder Pets, that’s Ming-Ming’s catchphrase.

You’re welcome.

back to school day

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As I’ve mentioned before, Catie goes to a year-round school. It’s generally a 9-weeks-on, 3-weeks-off system, but the breaks at both Christmas and in the summer are a little bit longer. She had a 2-week Christmas break, followed immediately by her 3-week school break.

Long story short: she started back to school today. I don’t know why they’re starting back on a Thursday, calendars and county school systems are weird like that. But after 5 weeks off – and a whole lot of changes to Catie’s life in the past five weeks (like, oh, her dad moving across the street after living 3,000 miles away for the past 2.5 years) – I kind of guessed that she was going to have a hard time with the transition back to school. Catie isn’t an easygoing, go-with-the-flow kind of kid, so I was anticipating a few curve balls.

I was not, however, anticipating that the rest of us would have curve balls too.

Last night, I got the kids to bed, and Chris and I hung out, talked, and watched TV for a while. When I was getting ready for bed, I went to take my pills (I have a few that I take in the morning and at night for various and sundry reasons, mostly vitamins). And this is where, I am guessing, based on the next few hours, that I forgot to take the pill that helps me go to sleep.

We went to bed, and I could. not. sleep. Which normally isn’t a problem for me (because, again: I take a medication for insomnia). So, midnight rolls around, then 1:00… sometime around 1:45, Lucy came in and wanted to get in bed between me and Chris, and I let her climb up, because it was easier than fighting with her about it. And then I still couldn’t sleep. I think I finally dozed off sometime after 2:30 a.m. (That’s the last time I remember looking at the clock.)

So, the alarm went off and I (obviously) felt like hell. Catie woke up and said she had a tummy ache. I know from past experience that this had very little probability of being an actual physical ailment, and was more likely due to being nervous about going back to school. I cuddled with her a little bit, we talked, and then I got her to eat some toast to settle her stomach.

After that, it was like a normal morning: got myself dressed, got the kids dressed, got Catie’s lunch packed, the whole thing.

Then, it was time to brush Lucy’s hair. Which she hates. Because her hair tangles like crazy and I always end up yanking it too hard and hurting her. (Oddly enough, she will sit patiently and let Chris brush her hair, but if I try it? No way, no how.)

She started throwing a tantrum because of the hair-brushing, and Lucy is the type of kid that when she cries too hard, she pukes. And that’s what she did. Everywhere. At the exact moment that I needed to be taking the kids to school.

And this right here is when it comes in really handy to have a second adult in the house, because Chris basically saved my butt. I left my puke-covered toddler (and puke-covered bathroom) with him, while I took Catie to school. I got her there 5 minutes before the bell rang.

Then, I rushed back home (thinking how thankful I am that the kids’ school and daycare are both less than three miles from my house), picked up Lucy – who was calmed down and cleaned up, because apparently Chris is a wizard, I don’t even KNOW – and took her to daycare.

And now I’m at work trying to catch my breath and wake the hell up because I got a really lousy night’s sleep.

So yeah. First day back to school didn’t go quite like I’d planned. Here’s hoping it goes a little more smoothly from now on.

life with Lucy

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On Friday evening, I went to daycare to pick up the girls. Lucy was happy to see me as always, but Catie burst into tears.

She said, “I thought Daddy was picking us up, I want to spend the night with him!”

We’ve been working on a custody schedule – basically, Dave gets the kids 2 weeknights and alternating weekends. It gives them a lot of quality time with their dad, it gives me a break, but it still gives them enough time at home to reinforce the idea that my house is their home base. And in theory, it’s a really good schedule.

But I also understand that in Catie’s mind, her dad has been here for about two weeks, and this is normally when he’d be leaving again, so she’s wanting to spend as much time as possible with him. I get that.

And while normally I’m the type who would say, “Sorry, kiddo, these are the rules and this is how it’s going to go,” I also know that I need to let her have time to adjust and feel secure with having her dad back in her life.

So, I texted Dave to see if he had plans, and he said he was fine with taking the kids. I asked Lucy if she wanted to go with Catie over to Daddy’s, or if she wanted to stay with me. She said, “I stay Mommy’s house!” Ok then, fine with me. Sometimes it’s nice to only have one kid at a time, even when that kid is a particularly energetic two year-old.

Dave came over and picked up Catie, and I honestly thought Lucy would change her mind when she saw Catie leaving without her, but she stood in the door and yelled goodbye to them, blew them kisses, then closed the door and asked me to play with her.

We spent the evening playing with all of Catie’s toys that Lucy is never allowed to touch. Every single Skylander action figure, Lucy would pick it up, say “What his name? Who he?” and then put them down. She wasn’t destructive at all, and she didn’t even really care about playing with them, it was just that she was able to touch them without Catie there to shriek at her to get away. Forbidden fruit and all that.

On Saturday morning, we goofed off for a while. At some point, she climbed up in my lap, handed me my camera, and said, “I say cheese!”

If the two year-old demands a selfie, you take a selfie.

Later, we picked up Catie from Dave’s place and headed over to my cousin’s house. The kids exchanged their Christmas gifts (we always seem to do our gift exchanges after New Year’s), and the kids played for over three hours while I hung out and visited with the grown-ups.

When we left, I really thought Lucy would be so exhausted that she’d be asleep in the car before we got out of my cousin’s neighborhood. I mean, she normally goes down for a nap around 2:00 (and she usually sleeps at least an hour & a half or so), and it was well after 4:00 p.m. But she didn’t, she stayed awake all the way to my parents’ house. I figured by that point, we’d just power through without a nap and I’d put her to bed early. We had dinner with my folks, and the kids played for a while before we finally came back home.

I’m not sure exactly when she got her second wind, but it was like WHOA. She was basically like a tiny drunk who wouldn’t sleep it off. She was staggering in circles around the house, eating Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs straight out of the bag.

Sometime around 9 p.m. when she was still hyper, I decided to film a video of her.

We did four of those, they’re all pretty similar. She loved watching herself on the replay and then she’d want to film it again.

She finally fell asleep at 9:50 p.m. Long after her older sister had already called it a night, and WAY past her normal bedtime (typically between 8:30 and 9 p.m.), and on no nap to boot. I don’t know how on earth that happened.

Oh, and she was still awake and trying to climb in my bed a few hours later. I don’t even know.

She’s lucky she’s cute, that’s all I can say.