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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Beach Day!

Ramona talks about the beach a lot (almost as much as she talks about Christmas). She doesn't remember ever going to the beach since she hasn't been since she was 9 months old and we went to San Diego. So, we've been really wanting to take her. We decided to go to Maumee Bay today if the weather was nice, and it was, so we packed up our beach stuff and grabbed lunch at Subway so we could have a picnic on the beach.

She wore her new sunglasses almost the entire way there because she thought that is what you're supposed to do at the beach, I guess. I think she half didn't believe we were actually going to the beach, because when we got to the parking lot, she didn't seem that excited. From her height, I think she could only see the grassy hill and not the beach behind it. I really regret taking her ahead while Joe unpacked the car because her crazy excitement is now one of my favorite memories. There really is nothing as precious as the pure unadulterated joy of a child, and that was exactly what exuded as soon as we walked over the hill and she saw the beach.

"The beach! The beach! Fishie, look! We can play in the sand!" She immediately crouched down and started playing in the sand. I told her to look up and she saw the water. "The water! The beach!" So we walked down to the water and waded up to our ankles, but I told her she had to wait to go any deeper for Daddy to get there because we had to put on swimsuits. (I didn't do the swimsuit thing since I'm 38 weeks pregnant and did not want to subject the world to my pale, bloated body. Although the great thing about swimming in Lake Erie is that no matter how huge you think you are, you will never be the biggest person there.)

Joe got everything down to the beach, got us set up, and we ate lunch. Ramona was very impatient for us to finish eating so she could get in the water. She dug in the sand to pass the time, but really didn't want to wait much longer.
I thought she might be afraid of the waves, but she had a blast.
I laid on the blanket and took pictures. I was having a nice time there until some annoying people decided to set up their stuff two feet away from our blanket (literally) even though there was plenty of room on the beach and no reason for them to be so close. So I got to listen to some middle aged mom of teenagers talk about how she is a cool mom because she totally lets her kids smoke pot and get laid. She was telling this to her daughter's friend, which seemed kind of weird. She also told her daughter (who she said was 14) that she would take her to work out all summer so she would be super hot, which also seemed odd. I guess what I'm saying is, thanks for never pimping me out, Mom, especially when I was 14.

But other than that, it was a good time. Ramona was so happy, and it made me so happy to make her so happy. We had a lot of fun. Looking at pictures of me made me kind of sad since I'm so huge now, but I'm super pregnant, so what can I do? I did this weight gain and loss with Ramona, and I'll do it again with this kid.

I'm a little sun burned, but not too bad. Ramona got a bit of sun on her shoulders, too, even though she actually got sunblock. The kid is just SO pale, it's hard for her to get any sun without burning a little.
And look at how long her legs are! Kid is KILLING me with how big she's getting. It's hard to believe we'll be starting over with one of those unbelievably tiny kids again in a few weeks.

Anyway, I see many more beach trips coming up this summer and I'm even more convinced we need to spend a weekend up in Traverse City to play on a beach with nice sand and cleaner water. Tomorrow we are heading to Oak Harbor to see my little sister Erin's last marching band performance with her high school in the Memorial Day parade. Then, we're heading to Joe's parents house to eat barbeque and hang out. It should be fun.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Mother's Day Weekend

Our family fun for this weekend wasn't very exciting (mostly just because we didn't do anything new.) Ramona and Joe went to the zoo on Tuesday with our friends Becky and Dan, and their daughter Olivia who is a few months younger than Ramona.

She has been talking about the zoo non-stop since, so Joe and I decided to take her again on Saturday. Joe made us waffles for breakfast, and then we headed out. I wanted to see the new baby lemurs (who are SOOO cute and definitely worth a trip there.) I didn't bring my camera and didn't even remember to bring my phone so I don't have any pictures of them.

That night we went to Joe's parents' house to make his mom a Mother's Day dinner. I felt bad because I wasn't very entertaining, but Ramona was, so it was okay. I was just really tired and not feeling well and spent most of the time laying around on the couch watching TV.

Sunday, we went to church, where Ramona cried in the nursery the whole time again. She gets herself so worked up over it even though it isn't a big deal. I feel bad about it, but what can I do? I'm dreading her Child's Day Out program in the fall because I'm worried she'll cry every time. Especially since it's at the church.

Then Joe cleaned my car for me, inside and out, and it was pretty awesome. I feel like such an adult when I get in my car and it's not filled with garbage. He even used our carpet cleaner to get all the gunk out from under Ramona's car seat. After that, we headed to Pearson Park (hitting a new metropark!) to let Ramona run around on the playground and take my annual Mother's Day picture. I don't think we really got any good ones, since Ramona was non-compliant (she was either too tired to look at the camera or too excited to play depending on what time it was.) Oh, well.



After that, we headed to my parents' house to visit for awhile. We went up to Drown's and got some ice cream and then just hung around. It was nice to see everyone and it was a pretty relaxing weekend.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Another Great Weekend

I feel pretty cheesy about it, but I had an excellent weekend. It was a lot of socializing, and a lot of fun. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty "meh" on socializing in general. The idea of meeting up with people, and then talking to them and dealing with things can be overwhelming. It's funny, because when I was younger, going out with my friends was THE BEST. You know, hanging out with your buds every day after school, talking on the phone for hours. Friends were pretty much the best part of life.

Then, I grew up. I started dating and turned into one of those lame chicks that hangs out with her boyfriend most of the time, and then I had school and work and blah blah blah. Overwhelmed by life, with little time to do what I wanted, I just kind of fell out of the habit of socializing and got really bad at it. Like I forgot how to have a conversation. The internet always gives me the feeling that I'm having social interactions, so I just let that make up for the fact that I didn't spend much time with other people. There are always periods of strong friendships throughout my life (we had a great group of friends at the Grand Canyon we would hang out with all the time) and then friend droughts (the Death Valley years) but the worst has been since we moved home. A big part of moving home was supposed to be having our friends and family around, and while we have been enjoying that to a degree, it's not been to a high degree.

There's something about being an adult, and especially after marriage (or moving in together) and even more so after having kids, that kind of drains your desire to go places and do things. How lame is that? You're finally old enough to have the freedom and finances to go do stuff and you're too lazy and boring to it! This realization was the catalyst of my "do something every weekend this spring and summer" initiative. I miss having friends and things to do. I let myself get overwhelmed with responsibilities and miss out on fun. I let the drudgery of getting ready and wearing pants and a bra stop me from leaving my house. But no more!

This weekend fell into a fun place. My "do something" idea was to go to the children's museum in Grand Rapids. And that didn't even happen.

Friday night, my sister and her fiance ended up coming over and we had a little cook out/hang out kind of night. It was nice to spend time with them and just kind of BS about life in general. I really love that I live close enough to them that we can all get together at the drop of a hat like that.

Saturday, we got up and started our trip up to Grand Rapids. As we got to the Michigan border, Ramona said, "Oh no!" and then threw up all over herself. Poor kid. It was all chunky milk and super gross. Luckily, Joe's parents just happen to live off the next exit, so we went to their house to clean up and recover.

That left us with the task of deciding whether she was sick and we needed to go home, or it was one of her occasional morning vomits and she would be fine. Seeing as we had a nearly three hour drive ahead of us, we really didn't want to make the wrong choice. So, we gave her some time, she drank some water and ate some Cheerios and seemed fine. We decided to go for it. And it was the right decision (yay!).

When we got there I went out to eat with some blogger friends at a hibachi place and Ramona and Joe went to the mall and rode the carousel. After hanging out and talking for a couple hours, Joe picked me up and we decided not to go to the children's museum because they would be closing soon. Instead, we drove out to Holland and walked around the Tulip Festival. We got an insane funnel cake with peanut butter and chocolate sauce and just walked around looking at things. We got dinner at New Holland Brewing and then went home.

I was exhausted and Ramona was, too, so we went to bed. Joe went out to his friend's birthday party and came back later. The next day was a pretty typical Sunday- I actually got up in time for church, we went to the park for a walk and the playground for Ramona. She's been playing with other kids much more now, and it's reassuring to see her try to make friends. Whenever she's approached by child about her size, she says, "Hi, I'm Ramona. That's my Fishie. It's nice to meet you!" It doesn't work that well, but that seems to be more because kids her size are not very good at introducing themselves. Or communicating in general.

We went home and my friend Lindsey called, who hadn't talked to in awhile. It was nice to talk about stuff and catch up, and capped off my more social-than-usual weekend.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Freedom!

We had another busy weekend, and Joe and I both were camera-less the entire time, so you have to read words- oh no! Saturday we went down to Columbus for little Marielle's first birthday party. Remember a year ago when I was all, "baby, come out and play!" and then she did? Yeah, now she's walking and eating real food. It's crazy how fast babies grow.

As soon as we arrived, Ramona saw the cake and it was all she could think of until it was time to eat, at which point she wasn't that interested. Until she decided she wanted to eat someone else's cake (well, really, the icing) with someone else's spoon because she's kind of a jerk like that.

We had fun hanging out with family, and Ramona and Marielle's big sister Corinne helped open Marielle's presents, and then enjoyed playing with them. We got them the percussion set that Ramona has and it seemed like the kids had fun with it, so that was good.

I had been talking to a weddingbee friend (Mrs. Bunny for your reference) and we had been saying we needed to meet up in real life since she lives in Columbus. She also does photography and had mentioned that she would be able to do a maternity shoot, so we went to go get pictures at the Jeffrey Mansion at her suggestion. We had fun and it was really amazing how much Ramona liked her. She generally shows no interest in most people until she gets to know them, but she just kind of clicked with her immediately.

Anyway, I think the pictures went well (or as well as they can with Ramona preferring to play rather than be photographed.) I'm excited to see how they turned out (well, half terrified as well since I'm pretty huge and not feeling particularly pretty at this point.) Then we went to eat at the Cap City Diner, which was really good. They served rolls covered in butter that I will admit I have thought of ever day since then because they were awesome. Ramona was not particularly well behaved, but she wasn't a total terror either. It was nice to try somewhere new and we had fun.

Sunday I did a lot of sleeping. I've hit the wall in this pregnancy and am freaking exhausted most of the time. I just want to spend all my free time sleeping. Joe let me take a nap and took Ramona to go grocery shopping. They brought me back an iced coffee that Ramona was very excited about because she thought it was ice cream. I let her have a drink and she declared, "Ew! It's yucky! It tastes like customers!" which Joe and I have been saying about everything ever since then.

We're trying to go to all the metroparks, so we hit up Swan Creek. Ramona played on the playground and was pretty adventuresome. She tried to climb things she usually doesn't and actually interacted with some other kids. The best was when some older kid was sitting at the top of the slide and talking to her and she pushed his head in an attempt to make him look forward and go down the slide. If only adults could get out of conversations that easily, my life would be so much easier.

Anyway, the title of this post is alluding to the fact that I had my last final last night, so I have two weeks off before my summer classes start. Yay! I don't have any plans, and am probably too tired to actually do anything to celebrate this freedom, but it's nice to know I don't have to do anything after I get out of work.

And in totally weird thoughts, it is now May, aka the last month I will have only one child. That means I have to give birth in the near future, which is a pretty big bummer, but I also get to have a new baby, which is going to be amazing. And exhausting. It's always an adventure, right?