The girls got some surprise fun in the mail yesterday – a couple of books and binoculars from Grandma.  They immediately wanted to go outside and look for birds “like Ruby”. (Sad that instead of hunting rabbits a la Bugs Bunny they relate such things to Max & Ruby which must be the most boring cartoon ever made.)

It felt downright comfortable this afternoon at only 88 degrees.  The girls had a great time playing in their pool again.

After pool time came bath time and then an evening screening of Princess and the Frog.

For those who asked, I didn’t mean to imply that lessons don’t exist for Tessa’s age group.  But the place I am taking Sabrina has a hard rule that the kids must be 3 and she won’t turn 3 until after the lessons end for the summer.  Our rec center does offer classes that involve parent participation but I haven’t heard a lot of positive things about that program here and it would be difficult with Sabrina now that Steve is out of town. Tessa will definitely get lessons of her own soon(ish).

I’ve mentioned the heat – it has been in the mid 90’s here for the past 2 weeks.  I feel bad about the girls not getting to play outside much so early on in the summer so I’ve been trying to get them out in the late afternoon when our back yard is shaded.  I picked up a little plastic pool for them to cool off in.  I didn’t realize how tiny it was until they both got in it.  I might need to rethink it and get a little sprinkler instead.  But the girls had fun and stayed cool – that is what matters.  (I, on the other hand, was dying from the heat.)

Sabrina loves the water but is timid.  She doesn’t like to get her head wet even in the bathtub.  She is taking swimming lessons soon and I’m looking forward to seeing if they can convince her to go underwater.  She is firmly in the no-effing-way camp but I’ve heard a lot of success stories from this place she is taking her lessons.  Tessa is fearless which is almost worse because she makes me nervous.  She would likely jump right into a pool despite having no swimming skills. I’ll feel a little better when she is old enough for lessons.

My kids never drink soda.  My husband and I sometimes drink diet dr pepper or diet pepsi but we don’t want the girls to have the chemicals. They drink water or milk 99% of the time. Juice is a treat at parties.  The only form of soda they have ever had is a coke icee.  No, I’m not proud of the fact that they know and love coke in the icee form but we need a bribe to make them behave at Sam’s Club kids need to have some fun, right?  Today, we decided to try making coke icees at home.  We got out the little ice cream maker my mom sent us and gave it a whirl.

It was a long 10 minutes waiting for it to be done.

But it did turn out pretty slushy (just coke into an ice cream maker…nothing else added or done to it).

It wasn’t exactly like an icee – I think they add more air to give it a lighter texture.  But the girls enjoyed it.

It isn’t all fun and games. Sabrina’s writing skills are very weak (for the grandmas in the audience – kids are expected to enter kindergarten with second grade skills now including being able to write their names).  So I’m trying to work on her letters with her.  She really fights me on it so I’m trying very small periods – 10 minutes in the morning working on 1 worksheet and then we color together.

Tessa gets a coloring page with the same letter Sabrina is working on.  Let’s hope this approach will work because I don’t want it to turn into a battle with Sabrina so early but I also don’t want her to start out behind everyone else.

Days until daddy comes home:

And some other random photos.

Double time out. BAM! BAM! Don’t mess with momma after too few hours of sleep and before coffee:

It has been hot hot hot this week so not a lot of outside play time for the girls.  We are fortunate our back yard gets shade later in the afternoon so the girls can usually get out a little bit then.  My geraniums are quite happy with the heat.

The girls have been doing pretty well with not being able to play outside as much.  We went and bought a little $10 pool and hope to get that filled soon for some cooler play time outside. We try and plan our day during breakfast.  Sabrina always wants to know the agenda – even if I don’t have one yet.

Tessa wasn’t amused at being caught in a situation where she couldn’t immediately duck away from the camera.

I laughed when I uploaded these photos. Before kids, I always thought my kids would never have a lot of branded crap.  Then I discovered 1) how happy having a picture of Dora or princesses on a cup makes them 2) what great motivation a new cup or placemat might be when trying to get them to do a desired behavior and 3) how hard it can be to find crap without faces on it.

The girls and I are doing okay here on our own.  That’s what I say when anyone asks.  And it is true.  Mostly.  But a more true answer is that this is harder on the girls than I thought it would be.  I didn’t think they would like it but they are flexible and I figured with the daily Skype calls they would miss Daddy but life would go on as before.  That isn’t quite the case.  Already I am seeing some changes.

Every night after we close our Skype call, Sabrina cries and clings to me.  She says she wants Daddy to come back on the computer and talks about how much she misses him.  Some of this is her playing me but most is a genuine reaction.  Tessa doesn’t have the verbal ability to express her feelings or confusion so she has started acting out in other ways.  See the stuff animal on the table in the photo above? That is Tessa’s froggy.  He is her comfort object. Prior to the past 2 weeks, froggy lived in her bed exclusively unless she was sick or we were traveling.  She slept with him every night but the rest of the time he stayed in her bed.  Since Steve left, she wants froggy with her constantly.  I won’t let him leave the house (mostly because I’m afraid we’ll lose him) so every time we leave the house she throws a tantrum at leaving him behind.  While we are out of the house, she’ll ask about froggy in a panicky way.  I remind her he is waiting at home and she usually calms down although occasionally she’ll ask to go home to him.  This is not typical behavior for her.  She has also started throwing tantrums when I perform some of the things that are typically Steve’s duties.  When I tell her it is time to get out of the bathtub, she throws a tantrum.  When I try to put her in her PJs, she throws a tantrum.  I feel awful because I know she doesn’t understand why things changed but at the same time I can’t let her think the behavior is okay.

I try to reassure both girls that it is okay to be sad that Daddy isn’t here.  And I try to be understanding of the behaviors that are out of the ordinary but honestly it makes the job of holding things together here a little bit harder because I don’t know how to make it better. How can I ask them to understand something that I have trouble grasping?  At the suggestion of a friend, we are going to make paper chains to count down the days until Daddy is home.  Hopefully that visual reminder will be a little reassuring.

Yesterday was a long one.  Tessa was in a pissy challenging mood. I knew there was no way I would be up for baths at the end of a very long day.  So bath time came late afternoon.  And I let them play in there until they were prune-y.

After bath time, I left the girls put on their dress up princess ballerina outfits (their term).  Unfortunately, Tessa’s pissy challenging mood returned once bath time was over. But Sabrina immediately decided it was time for a ballerina show.  She asked me to turn music on and danced for 30 minutes while Tessa raged over an injustice that I won’t even try to describe.  Sabrina, who hated dance class and didn’t want to take it again, danced and paused for applause saying “Thank you! Thank you!” at the end of each song.  I’m wondering if the school wasn’t a good fit for her.  Or if she just doesn’t want any structure and prefers to do her own thing in our sun room instead of formal classes. (Conditions weren’t great for photos but I wasn’t going to stop her so that I could adjust the lighting.)

I’ve not written much about our impending move since sharing that I’m not overjoyed to be leaving my great friends and selling my beautiful house.  I’ve had a few email and facebook inquiries so I thought I would follow up. (Thank you all for thinking of me!)

I’m okay. I’m still not overjoyed about leaving my great friends and selling my beautiful house but I’m adjusting.  Steve leaving was a reality check.  I don’t want to be apart from him.  He is my foundation.  I love my great friends and beautiful house but none of it makes me happy without him.  (All together now “awwwww”.)  I also had to knock off some of my moping and whining because he offered to quit his new job and find another one here so that we could stay.  I didn’t want to be such a whiny baby that he was ready to give up his new job so I’m toning it down a little.

I was fully involved in the decision from the beginning; I just didn’t realize how much I would hate the idea of leaving.  I keep reminding myself why I agreed to do this in the first place and run through the good things about it in my head.  First and foremost?  I’ve been able to revive my MLS obsession.  I love houses.  It might be a bit of an addiction.  At first, combing the MLS in the areas we are considering living depressed me. The housing market in Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to have suffered as many markets have.  Everything in our price range was boring, not updated 1950’s ranches or 1970’s split levels (not that there is anything wrong with that).  But we’ve found some interesting options that give me hope that when we are ready to buy again we might be able to find something interesting.  The reality is that we will pay the same or a little more money for about 1/3 less square footage in Pittsburgh.  But we always said this house was bigger than we needed anyway.

(Playing with my white balance on the new camera.)

I feel bad that my obvious difficulty with this move has put greater pressure on Steve.  He feels a responsibility to find (and pay for) a great house and to love his job to make it all worth it.  My intention in expressing my grief was never to make it more difficult for him.  I have a need to process my feelings out loud and unfortunately that sometimes means my husband hears more about what is going on inside my head than he needs or wants to.  I didn’t do the stiff upper lip thing so well this time – I was much better at it when we moved south.

The bottom line of it all is that now that the process has begun (Steve in Pgh, the house on the market), I am hoping for a swift resolution.  I will miss the life we’ve built here but it will all be good in the end.

For my long time readers/friends, watching Steve drive away yesterday was oddly reminiscent of Guatemala. Although this time I speak the language and the water won’t kill me.