Still feeling sleep deprived but we had a nice weekend anyway! Went to my nephew’s basketball game on Friday, got lots of snow and I went to afternoon tea on Saturday and Sunday was a productive morning followed by Super Bowl fun. Did everyone love Usher’s halftime show as much as I did?? 

Usual first half of Friday, where I dropped the kids off with Grandma then worked, but then I grocery shopped in person for the first time since early 2020?? And it was terrible. Never again. My nephew plays JV (and sometimes Varsity) basketball up in Loveland but they were playing a game near us that evening, so it was the perfect opportunity to go watch! I cannot say I paid much attention because I literally had children clinging and climbing on me the entire time — why is mom life like that and dads get to just enjoy stuff??? — but I was just trying to realistically set Dempsey and Lydia’s expectations of how much I’ll pay attention when/if they play sports some day 😂 I’ll be there but I won’t be there, ya know? We picked up pizza at Cosmo’s on our way back home and is that place always such a disorganized disaster?? 

Woke up to more snow that I’d expected on Saturday! Both kids went to the dentist last week and now Lydia has her very own toothbrush. She’s pretty tolerant of having her teeth brushed for now but she mostly just wants to hold her toothbrush under the running water 😂 Joey made us some really good chocolate waffles and most of us loved them! Lydia acted like they were poison. After she went down for her morning nap, Dempsey and I put on our “movie shoes” (I wore those sneakers to a movie the other day and called them that, so now we both have a pair 😂🥺) and then he and I took a trip to the library and Whole Foods. Fun to run our little errands together. He was straight falling asleep in the car on the ride back but then would NOT take a nap, so here we are on day five of no nap and an insane evening time where he is just in a different dimension because he’s so tired.

I left at 2 to go to afternoon tea at D Bar with some ladies from my book club and we had a lot of fun! My table of four was free of dietary restrictions so we got to share our little tower equally and I had a fellow mom of two to chat with, so that was very nice. Also, everything tasted amazing! Got home and Mr. Mom had both kids playing together and dinner in the oven. And it came out really good! After the kids went to bed, Joey and I finished the movie we started on Friday and it was just okay. Thought Anne Hathaway and Shea Whigham were pretty good but I read Eileen in 2022 and it is so perverse and crude and disturbing. It’s fine when all of that is just in your head but when you try to actualize it, it all sort of falls apart. Also, the novel is told in first person so not having a voiceover seemed a strange choice to me. Oh well! 

Sunday started at Onefold! So hard to go there these days because our children are up so early and even just waiting until 8 AM to eat breakfast is hard. Dempsey was literally begging me for a snack in the car on the way there 😟 But once we had food, we were all better. That breakfast burrito is so dang good! Felt like I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen — made pulled pork, coleslaw, hummus, cookies AND salads for the week, whew! — with a pause for some play time with Lydi. She decided my head was a good place to sit 😂 After little miss was up from her second nap, we got in the car and headed to Hannah and Josh’s to “watch” the game. Dempsey fell asleep in the car, of course. Poor buddy! It is utter chaos with four children running around and I likened the two 3-year-olds to the middle child because everyone is paying attention to the oldest and youngest while Dempsey and Henry have pulled a bag of popcorn off the table and are eating it on the floor without anyone noticing 🤪😂 Can’t say I watched ANY of the game but that halftime show was made for me, a millennial who grew up listening to Usher, and I loved every second! We gave up watching till the end and headed home around 8:30 to get the kids to bed. They went down easy but BOTH of them were up twice each overnight. Whyyyyy. 

Happy Valentine’s Week (because that’s a thing 😉). I hope it’s a good one!

How was everyone’s weekend? We had plans to get together with Hannah, Josh and the boys but Hannah was under the weather so we had to cancel, then try to make up for it with Friday night wings. Saturday featured snow, swim, Starbucks and a steamy lunch that I’ll explain later 😂 We had a afternoon visit from Aunt Bean and Uncle Wayne and then an early night for our two non-nappers. Joey started feeling sick on Friday and by Sunday he was in the thick of it, so I took the kids over to Prost, where Betsy and Jory were hosting a celebration in honor of Elliott’s birthday. Happy ✨GOLDEN✨ Birthday to her today. She is so missed.

The usual Friday business. Dropped the kids off at Grandma’s then came home to work. Joey picked them up and we let Dempsey decide our dinner plans, so wings it was! Someone took a good nap at Grandma’s, so he was up till 9:30 again 😩 And then he got out of bed at midnight and 2:30 AM and then up for the day at 6. I’ve resigned myself to this being the new normal. 

I got up with both kids and took them downstairs at 6 on Saturday, so Joey could get some more sleep. They helped me start coffee and waffles 🥰 We had a make up token for Dempsey’s swim lesson while we were on vacation, so we rescheduled for 9:30 that morning. He had a great time! Afterward, I took him to Starbucks for the first time to get a cake pop. He definitely had a great time with that too! 

After roasting a chicken last week and making a mess in the oven, I had put in a reminder to use the self-clean feature on the oven and without thinking about the time or the smell or the temperature outside, we started it on Saturday morning but it was a BAD decision because it set off the fire alarm and woke Lydia up, then between the smell and the smoke, we had to open all of the windows downstairs while it was snowing. When Dempsey and I got home, Joey and Lyds were holed up in the kids room with the heater blasting. We all had a nice picnic lunch up there and it wasn’t messy or chaotic at all 😂😂

Dempsey helped me clean the oven door and the wire racks after everything had cooled down and it honestly is so much cleaner in there, despite taking three times as long as it probably would’ve if I’d done it on my own 😂 This boy loves cleaning! Aunt Bean and Uncle Wayne came over to bear witness to the insanity of two children — especially when they were both walking around eating a muffin and leaving crumbs everywhere — and visit with Joey and I as well. We hadn’t seen them in too long and it was so nice having them over. After they left, I made us all some salmon and sweet potato fries for dinner. Dempsey had protested his nap and was literally falling asleep at the table, so he was in bed early and easy. Sissy too, so Joey and I nearly had enough time to watch an entire 2.5 hour movie! More on that later 😉

We had a pretty simple Sunday. Joey and Dempsey picked up biscuit sandwiches for us three and a hash brown for Sissy. He had a bit of a cry over how his kept slipping apart. Poor buddy! Joey was feeling pretty rough, so we decided it would be best if he didn’t join us at the celebration. I got our salads made before we took off, thanks to a little helper, who stuffed in all the salad greens and put the lids on the jars 🥺 It was nice seeing everyone at the brewery and I think Elliott would’ve loved the donut keychains and big 5 balloon they had for her. Back at home, Lydia took another nap, Dempsey and Joey watched a movie and I made us cashew chicken for dinner. I can’t seem to not make a mess with oil when I use the wok but the meal always turns out good! Got the kids to bed and finished Anatomy of a Fall. I thought it was very good. I could see how someone might find it slow and uneventful, but I thought it was completely fascinating and complex. Sandra Hüller was incredible and so deserving of that Best Actress nomination. In other news, Joey has slept on the floor of Dempsey’s room the past two nights, while I sleep with Lydia (in her crib) in our room, so three of us have slept good 😋😬 I know this is just a phase, but I’m hoping it gets better sooner rather than later.