Day in the Life - Spring 14'

I've done a quarterly day in the life for 2 full years now!  My first DITL, Levi was a newborn & Charlie was the same age as Levi is now. Man, Charlie was so easily entertained. Levi can't be left unsupervised for more than 1 minute or he will be in trouble :)  I think Levi also whines about 50X more than Charlie did at this age. That could just be some selective remembering on my part though.  I also went back and read last spring's posts and I had a pictures of big, nasty snow piles that were still around. Despite the fact we had a healthy dumping of snow just last week, there is currently no snow around so I would say that's a win . Even if I have washed all of the winter stuff at least 3 times with the intention of packing it away only to need it again. Sigh. I know it seems like every winter is the worse than the previous one so it was weird to see that picture. It sure did seem like this winter was much more awful than last. Anyways, I'll stop talking about the weather (for now).

Monday, April 23
Charlie: Age 4 
Levi: Age 2
And I'm also 15 weeks pregnant with baby #3!

4am'ish- I am wide awake. For no reason. I use the bathroom and then just stare at the ceiling being super annoyed that I am not sleeping because I am so tired.  I do fall back asleep around 5am and then proceed to have super bizarre dreams which always happens after my middle of the night awake times. This dream involved me agreeing to watch Sandy (a big red cow from mom & dad's farm) for them. I didn't have anywhere to milk her so I walked up and down the street with her in town going door to door at business looking for a place to milk her. Not normal, that's for sure.

The next thing I hear is Charlie coming down and telling us the clock says 6-5-8 so it's time to get up. We are part excited that he slept in but also not ready to get up. He is already dressed so clearly he's ready to get this show on the road. We tell him we're coming (he falls for it) and so he goes out and turns on the TV and keeps himself entertained. His favorite morning toy is a toy drill. The only time he EVER plays with it is before 7am.  He also goes down to the basement and reports back to us that "no chicks died" overnight. We have 31 chicks living in our basement until they get a little bigger and can join us our 45+ chicks outside in the shop.

I finally force myself out of bed at 7:30. Levi is awake so I go and get him up and get him changed. We go downstairs and feed & water the chickens and then get ready for breakfast. Today the boys want cereal (usually it's waffles & yogurt or fruit). Charlie also has a yogurt and Levi has a clementine, yogurt & toast with peanut butter. I join them with some raisin bran & toast. I have plenty to do today so I make a to do list to try to help me stay on track. Plus it feels so great to cross things off.

Levi is passing the time by dragging the kitchen chairs around to reach things he can't have but hey, he's not hanging on me. Charlie is playing tractors & baling hay. Levi moves his chair over to the sink & wants to fill up the water jugs for the chickens. I gather the laundry from downstairs but before I can put it in a basket, I need to empty a basket of clean clothes that I have. I have serious issues with putting away my laundry. I get a load in the washer and Levi meets me up there - completely soaked. We change his shirt and then head back downstairs. Erik asks me to send him some pics from Easter for him to send out to his co-workers so we do that. Charlie continues to play through all of this!

We get ready and head outside to care for our outdoor chickens. I can't believe how much they have grown in 10 days and even how much they changed during the 36 hours we were gone over Easter. We will definitely need to figure out their next home very soon. (On Tuesday we built them a bigger pen in the shop & moved them out of the pool. The smaller batch then got moved from the basement out the pool. So no more critters in the house!)Charlie is excited they are also all still alive. We fill them up on feed & water. They all eat and then proceed to pass out under the lights. Rough life for our chickies.

Water wagon. We bring a lot back since the chief waterer tends to spill quite a bit.

Filling up the feeders. The cat would love to sneak in to "play" with the chickens.

Our dog has been at the white farm since Friday night & Duane called this morning to say that their dog got sprayed by a skunk on Sunday night and he's not sure how smelly Daisy will be.  Since it is so beautiful out, we head down to pick her up  before she wears out her welcome. During the drive down, Levi puts his nasty shoelaces in his mouth and then just takes his shoes & socks off as usual (this hasn't changed since spring 2013 post). Charlie counts to 100 and lectures me again about how I did not know that there was a water spout in our basement. We find grandpa in the barn and the boys help fill up a pail of feed for a calf, check on a rooster, and check on the bigger calves. We also help grandpa with some computer things & then he helps load up Daisy (thankfully she doesn't smell like skunk). Grandpa also sends us home with some bunny cupcakes from Easter.

Water break fresh from the well

We make it back home around 11:15 and I  start another load of laundry and then start making lunch. We're having leftover spaghetti squash with meat sauce, beans & apple. Charlie is pouting that he doesn't even like leftovers, he's not hungry, and all he wants is the black bunny cupcake. Eventually he does come and sit down and clears his plate. Even Levi eats most of his lunch without much complaint. Then we share the bunny cupcakes.

After lunch I take a shower & Erik takes the boys on a quick walk. Sometime between when we got home and now, it has gotten ridiculously windy. Go figure, seems like whenever we have a warm & sunny day it is super windy.  After another round of musical laundry baskets I have another empty one to take the 2 clean loads outside with another load in the washer. This is when I realize exactly how windy  it is. So annoying!!! The boys play on the swingset and are just happy to be outside. Charlie asks if he can go pee in the grass & I say yes but warn him that the wind may be a problem for that. He heads to the house. I now have a free blow out from the wind so we go back in and get ready for nap. Nap time is pretty sacred here and I like to get going on it between 12:30-1 and we're already after 1pm by now.  Levi goes pee on the potty & then we read books in Charlie's room. Levi listens for awhile and then wanders off.  After we're done reading we go into Levi's room to sing. He's very tired and goes down without protest today over sleeping in the crib (I have recently made him move back into the crib because he doesn't stay in his room otherwise).

My  "slightly annoyed by the wind" face

 

 

It's almost 2pm by now and both boys are out. I'm tired & I'm not messing around today and retreat right to the bedroom. I tell myself I will watch one episode of Friday Night Lights and then be productive. Well, FNL enthusiasts, this was Season 4 ("The Son") and is a huge tear jerker with Matt being the main story line. So I weep through the entire thing and then have to watch another one. I fall asleep half way through and force myself up around 3:15 so it was a short nap for me but enough to power me through the day. {Sidenote: Overall feelings on FNL - Julie is a twerp, I love watching the Riggins bros relationship grow, want so badly for Tyra to get it & keep it together, think coach Taylor can be so nice one minute and a huge prick the next, wonder if that's really the typical lifestyle for teenagers in TX, and have a very strong dislike for people like Joe McCoy, I want to smack him}  

My phone never rang but I have a voicemail from my work. I am slightly annoyed by the message but I am an enabler and let them know I will take care of it. I also call the place where are chickens will be getting processed and get an appointment for June 10th. We have heard they book out pretty far in advance and since we want them to be inspected so we can sell some (we probably won't need 70 for ourselves...) I figured we might as well get it on the calendar. That will be a fun morning. I also call and schedule our car to get new tires later this week.

By this time Levi is awake. Nice & long (& much needed) nap for him today. We put the final load of clothes in the dryer (not going to bother with the wind) & go visit with Erik in his office. Charlie comes stumbling in & he obviously is not ready to be up yet. Levi is climbing all over him & being a real pain. Charlie is not in the mood to go to town & Erik says he'll be done with work soon so I tell Charlie he can stay home & watch a show on the Kindle. Levi and I head to town about 4pm. We stop at work and get the shopping list & then head to the store. I get bananas (Charlie is bringing smoothies for snack to school tomorrow; he was supposed to do it last week but he was sick) and milk for us and I know there is something else that I needed but I can't remember.  It appears that preschool will also be making granola bars based on the shopping list from them. As always, Levi gets a sucker. We stop back at work and drop off the groceries and then head to the library. I reserved Breaking Bad Season 4 (pt 2) & it came in. Ordering movies from the library is perhaps the greatest idea ever. The only downside is that you can only rent them for 5 days which means you need to binge watch.  So I try to make sure I will have enough time to watch a set before I request them. There are 6 episodes on this set so I only have to average a little over 1/day.

We head for home and about 2 miles from home, I remember I was going to buy buns. Because I wanted to have burgers on the grill tonight. DUH! I knew it was something moderately pressing because normally I wouldn't make a special trip to town for milk & bananas.  Ugh. Oh well. We get home & Charlie is still on the kindle (1.5 hours and counting) and it's quite obvious that we have woken Erik from a little snooze on the couch. We usually eat supper around 5:15-5:30, it is now 5:30 and nothing has even been started. I'm not even really annoyed because I have had more than my fair share of worthless days lately. We decide it's too windy to grill anyways so I make burgers on the George foreman and cut up some potatoes to throw in the oven.

Erik takes the boys outside. They dump out a wagon full of sticks and then clean the chicken pool. Erik told me the boys would not stop fighting and would not leave each other alone for 2 minutes. But they got the chicken area cleaned up & got them fed & watered again.

Supper was on the later side for us. Charlie told me he really liked it & even said thank you for making us supper. Levi ate okay but then refused to sit down. He & Erik got into it and Levi quickly entered hot mess territory where he would stay for the rest of the night.  Erik took Levi up to take a bath. Charlie & I did the chicken chores downstairs & then I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. This included going through the pile of mail on the counter & sweeping the floors. Charlie also took a shower & figured out what to take to preschool for "w" in the morning (he decided on wagon but in the morning changed his mind to waffle).

There was more drama & tears from Levi although I don't remember what it was all for.  They get their teeth brushed and then Erik & Charlie played 2 games of Sorry. We play games pretty much every night, usually it's either Sorry or Uno. He is good at both & usually wins with very little help from us. We rarely ever LET him win, unless we're really in a hurry.  Tonight they each win a game.  While they're playing I take Levi up for bedtime. We read the books he picks out and then sing "choo-choo", "ABC's" and "baa, baa black sheep". He goes down no problem after he asks me to cover him up and give him his tag which he promptly puts in his mouth. As he's shoving his blankie in my face I make a note to wash that bad boy the next day. He loves chewing on it so it always smells & is always wet on the corners. Gross. Levi is sound asleep by 7:30.

I came back down and went outside to take clothes off the line. It was very chilly out by now with the wind. Erik took Charlie up and put him to bed around 8pm  (and no protests about wanting me to do it!). Erik came back down and passed out on the couch almost immediately.  I started working through the massive pile of clothes to fold & unpacking our suitcase from the weekend. Once I was sure Erik was not paying attention to the TV whatsoever, I put in Breaking Bad. He watched season 1 with me but hasn't since then and it's kind of hard to follow. He heads to bed around 8:45 & Charlie reappears with some excuse about why he can't go to bed. This is very rare of him to come back down. I tell him he has to go to bed because he has school in the morning so he takes off but I can still hear him dilly-dallying at the top of the stairs for a bit.

I promise myself I will only watch 1 episode of Breaking Bad. I am already mourning the end of Breaking Bad and I still have 2.5 seasons left. But, I know that 5 & 6 are short seasons so I'm already sad. So glad that we could have never watched it on TV, it would be pretty painful to have to wait in between seasons. When it's over at 9:30, I tell myself I will watch 1/2 of the next one. HAHA. Lucky (?) for me, it freezes up about 15 minutes into the second episode. I take it as a sign & get ready for bed. I think I pass out before I hit the pillow.

Overall, I'd say we had a pretty good day coming off of a holiday weekend that usually results in some rough days ahead from disrupted sleep schedules and such. We did more running around than we might typically do on a day. I think that it was a combo of the nice weather and avoiding my list inside.  However, I will admit that this was one of the more productive days I have had in a very long time. Bless you warm weather!!!!

Read about our past Day in the Life days here :)