Oskar and Elena Make Life Busy

I know I said a post was coming soon. That was a couple weeks ago. Strangely enough, I decided to work instead of write. Hard to believe, I know. This also might be full of errors, but I can't get anything done with these hooligans hanging about.

I just realized I haven't posted since before my birthday. That was a while ago. I'm not a big birthday person, but we enjoyed Surly's entrance into South Dakota and some delicious Mexican food, so the day was a win. I'm also happy to report that I turned 30 with no mid-life/third-life/quarter-life (depends on your confidence, I suppose) crisis and the world kept turning.

Dan got me flowers for my birthday and Oskar was quick to spot them. Oskar loves flowers and assumed he was responsible for their appearance in our house.
Oskar: "Oh! You got me flowers! They are beautiful! Thank you so much!"
Dan: "Oskar, those are flowers for mommy."
Oskar: "Mommy, I got these for you. You're welcome."

I decided a few weeks ago to build a patio because I would like to use our yard more and we don't really have the money to hire the job done. In theory, this is a great idea. In reality, I have 2 kids, a job and weekends that insist on being over 90 degrees. People have asked me if I know how to build a patio. No, not really. But the pavers came with an installation instruction video online and I enjoy learning as I go. We are almost done with the excavation and I have already learned something really important that I can apply if and when we ever need to build another patio: HIRE PEOPLE TO BUILD THE EFFING PATIO.

You know you are having a bad day when you are seriously wondering if you should take anger management classes. I recently had such a day. I look at Ellie and I think, you really are wonderful, but seriously, two kids? What was I thinking? She had slept for only 60 minutes on this particular day. Forty five of those minutes were spent with Oskar yelling at me because he can't read.

Oskar is in an extremely trying phase of his life. I alternate between thinking he is the most amazing thing in the world and wanting to throw him across the room. He has many of his books memorized and insists on "reading" them. This is fine, except he will get to a page he doesn't know or a less familiar book and he realizes he can't read and starts yelling and crying. The tantrum builds, because it's bedtime and he is over tired and eventually he is just screaming. It is delightful. I'm slowly learning some tricks to deal with this situation, but I don't look forward to story time right now and that makes me sad.

Baby ducks!

I recently told Oskar that we had to go on a walk to get Elena to sleep. She finally passed out and Oskar said, " Mommy! You're right! It worked!" I would really appreciate if he didn't always sound so surprised when I accomplish something. Often we will drive somewhere and when we are getting out of the car, he will say, "You did it!" or "We made it!" Thanks, buddy.

Elena continues to grow and develop. She is still freakishly loud, strong and is walking along furniture and transferring weight from subject to subject. She is also really good at carefully lowering her weight down instead of just falling to the ground. She is also a super climber and problem solver. She is eight months old today and is a mostly happy baby. She enjoys a variety of food and STILL REFUSES TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT. I'm so tired. One nice thing about Ellie is how absolutely enamored with me she is. Dan is all fine and good, but holy moly does she react gleefully when she sees me. Then when I hold her, she climbs me in a fit of joy.

Oskar is Dan's child. Elena is clearly mine.

Some of you may have seen her poofy eye on Facebook or in real life. I'm happy to report that after being diagnosed with some sort of eyelid infection, she is on the mend and it no longer looks like she was abused. I'm always hesitant to give my kids antibiotics when we don't know for sure what the problem is, and in this case the doctor pretty much said that the eyelid infection was his best guess, but the medicine is working its little antibiotic magic and she is looking great.

We spent the Fourth of July at my parents' cabin. What a beautiful weekend. Perfect days and cool nights. Dan and I have come to the conclusion that we will never live further south than we do right now. There is simply no relief from the heat. When we worked at camp there would be a hot week, but then you would get a cool week to recover. It was great. All I want is to leave my windows open for a few days to get some fresh air in the house. Apparently this is not a possibility. I got an alert on my phone that the heat index was going to be 105. This is too hot.

At least someone is enjoying our beach and the six inches of rain we've gotten today...

While at the cabin I tried to get some good pictures of the kids because my mom had gotten them some really cute outfits. I can photograph them separately fairly well, so I greatly overestimated my ability to capture both my crazies at the same time. I walked back into the cabin, sweating from our little photo shoot, and my mom asked me if I got any good shots. I answered, "I got an accurate depiction of our life." The few decent ones I got are scattered among this post.

Loon friend!

Oskar wanted to share his thoughts with you all"
"I'm gonna tell the world about a volcano. It shoots lava HIGH in the sky! Once upon a time there was lava. Once upon a time there was a Mauna Loa Volcano. It's a loud volcano."