The days are long. I had a wonderful reprieve this week when Tim and Abby took Alice for several hours while Jack was in school, to thank me for watching their girls the day before. In my past life I probably would have rejected the offer, but I am just so starved for time to accomplish anything at all these days, that I took them up on it. It was exactly the coming-up-for-air experience I needed after months of no naps for Alice (she isn't taking well to quiet time either) and long work hours for Jared. It was absolutely glorious to spend several hours puttering around the house, taking care of so many micro-annoyances that have been begging for attention for months, but are always bumped off the to-do list by more urgent items. For the first time in . . . years(?) I reached a point in the day after maybe 5 hours of puttering when I thought to myself, "I feel good about what I have accomplished today. It is enough." And then when the kids came home, I played with them without anything nagging in my brain. I relaxed in the evening without scrambling frantically to try to "catch up" with the everyday things that need doing--a fruitless endeavor because this isn't a season of my life where I can ever really get caught up. So it was good to see that it is possible to get to a point where I do feel caught up and content, and all it takes is one day with five hours of alone time. Five hours of alone time is not realistic for me and won't be for years, but one day when Alice is in kindergarten, five hours of alone time will happen regularly. It feels good to know that this isn't where I'll be forever.
Something I will miss about this stage is toddler Alice. She is so kind. She says the funniest things. she is so perceptive and precocious. I am fairly smothered by her, but at least she is grateful and sweet and funny about smothering me, so that's nice. I'm grateful to have a big kid too. Jack came home from school while Alice was away that day earlier this week, and I was like, "hey let's read on the couches by the fireplace for a while." And he did! It was crazy! We just like cozied in and each read our own books by the fireplace for half an hour. Absolutely wild stuff to imagine a future when both of my kids would do that. Bittersweet watching these kids grow up, that's for sure.
We had our neighbors over for dinner this week for the first time! We have neighbors in the house next to us, and in the house next to them. One of them is due to have a baby end of the month, so that was a good deadline for me to hurry and get them over. We had a great time! Jack is the oldest, and then there are 2- and 4-year-old girls and a 2-year-old boy, plus Alice. The kids played spectacularly together while the rest of us got to know each other. It was an easy gathering and I feel so grown up and settled in having made that happen. I'm excited to be able to host in our backyard soon. In the meantime, the kids had no complaints hiking up and down the dirt piles. 10/10.
I am out of time, so let's get to some pictures:
We are just coming off of spring break. We had a great time! Next year hopefully we will be settled enough to have leftover brain power to plan family trips for the occasional school break. Jared was backed up at work with his own patients, the fired PA's patients, and the sick nurse practitioner's patients. Luckily we had some family come to us for some fun Spring Break cousin time to keep us busy. Early in the week Alice got a lot of face time with Aspen, then Jack had a day playing with his cousin Cole, and then Jordan and Amanda's family came for the last half of the week. And the cherry on top has been watching progress in our backyard. So far they have the lower retaining wall nearly finished, as well as the stone steps up to the second tier. I imagine this next week will be mostly grading and leveling of the remainder of the yard, and then later this month the rest of the retaining walls and eventually sod and patio.
A random health journal/update-- my POTS feels really well managed lately! I'll have the occasional flare, but I have the tools to get back on track. I think my cache of supplements is really helping. Something absolutely wild that I'm interested to keep an eye on this year has been the decline of my allergy symptoms. Last year I was down bad with allergies from March until November. REALLY down bad. This year, I had a random bad week in February, but not much since then. If I feel like there might be some allergy symptoms coming on I'll do a spray of flonase, but that's really the most I've needed. Maybe it's just too early in the season for my particular allergies, but I'm feeling hopeful. I do wonder if keeping my POTS well managed this year is helping with MCAS symptoms (which feel like allergy symptoms), or perhaps a big issue last year is that I was in a rental that previously housed a cat? Seems weird that would have affected me for so long when we had that house scrubbed from top to bottom many times. This is a mystery I may never solve, but for now I'm feeling hopeful that maybe I won't have to go down the path of allergy shots. Fingers crossed, knock on wood. Lots of spring left ahead of us.
And now for some pictures from our week:
After a miserable two weeks of varying degrees of sickness for everyone in our home, we are finally all well again! Just in time for spring break. It's been a loooot of time away from school for Jack. And for me. The word I would use to describe the last few weeks is "defeated." I was already feeling the strain with Alice giving up her nap, and me not getting that built-in break each day to rest or accomplish some of the many things that need to get done. Then early last week, the other provider who works with Jared was let go and all his patients went to Jared. So Jared's workload has pretty much doubled, and as if he wasn't already getting home late before, now he is realllllly not getting home until late. Like, after rush hour has ended for the day late. After Alice is fully asleep for the night. After dinner has been long cleaned up. After Jack's extracurriculars and evening wind down. They are long days for both of us. Throw in a few sick kids, and I truly have just felt so defeated and drained. It's already tough to accomplish anything beyond the daily essentials when parenting young children. These days I feel like I can't even get to the bare minimum. Even throwing a crock-pot meal in the slow cooker for dinner has been beyond my capacity many days in the past two weeks.
I have never been so grateful for a holiday weekend, and for my foresight to ask if Jared could take the kids to the cabin so I could stay home and catch a break (big-time parenting burnout for me lately), and tackle some more unpacking and to-do list items. He was only able to go for two days, but I have never needed the break more and am so grateful for it. They should be back home in a few hours, and I made a big dent in our terrifying pile of miscellaneous boxes left in the garage. Also happening right now--a big tractor is in our backyard as I type this, leveling things out and getting our yard ready for retaining walls to be added. Our backyard is underway! By the end of the month it should be leveled, sodded, patio'd, and fenced. It's a good month.
My grandmother is quite sick. I have been to visit her a few times this week. I'm so grateful for her--for her love and how she raised her family, for all I have learned from her about hosting and how it should feel low-key, and not a big to-do. For her example of faith, and strength. For how she carries herself in the world and interacts with others. For how she has encouraged me to keep this family blog all these years. I am grateful to be be able to visit her during this hard time. I have a feeling she may be too sick and not reading blog posts anymore, but just in case she's reading this, I love you so much grandma. Always. For your Christmas present this year, I'm committing to another year of weekly blog posts in 2027. Thank you for being a wonderful example to me❤️
And now, for some pictures from our week:
We're crawling our way out of this last week. Jack picked up an awful virus at awful timing. We had a trip planned to drive to Boise over the weekend to visit family and see his favorite cousin get baptized. Jack had been looking forward to it all year, really. So when he started coming down with this virus the day before we planned to go, I could see the writing on the wall and knew we weren't going to be able to go. That night he woke up with a fever and nausea, and he has been absolutely miserable ever since. He sobbed when he found out we wouldn't be visiting Idaho after all. He sobbed some more when he realized his perfect attendance record for the school year wouldn't be continuing. Then since we had to stay home, he cried because he knew he was also missing his first flag football game of the season. I cried a lot on his behalf too. It's one thing to see your child sick and miserable. It's another thing when they have to miss out on multiple things they were really excited about because of it.
The same day of the missed Idaho trip, my Dad had a stroke. We are so grateful it was relatively mild and only affected some of his peripheral vision, but it's still scary and sad. I'm sad that I couldn't visit him in the hospital because of the possibility I might be carrying this virus. I also would have loved to visit my sick grandmother this weekend, but again, I won't risk carrying this miserable virus to where she lives. I know there's no convenient time for someone to get sick, but the timing on this one felt especially awful. It hurts to know exactly who passed this virus to us, and to know they absolutely could have chosen not to bring it to our home, but they did anyway. I know I need to get over it, but it will take some time. It's been a painful week.
Not much else to report, and not many pictures from this week, but here are the ones I have:
Happy Monday! We found out that our backyard should be going in sometime in April. Hooray! The weather is so nice that we're just really excited to be able to spend our evenings on a back patio with the kids and dog running around on some grass.
I was able to visit my grandmother last night, which was a highlight of my week. She isn't feeling well lately. I'm grateful we made it to Utah so I can spend time with loved ones and see my grandma more often.
Here are some funny things Alice has said this week:
+ (Alice trying to get off a tricky piece of playground equipment and ending up in a headstand before her feet fell to the ground) Alice: "Well that was different."
+ (Alice dropping her food on the ground) Alice: "So, that happened."
+ Alice when I tried to make her take a rest one afternoon, in her sternest voice: "Mom. Lambert. Jenelle. We are NOT taking a nap today."
Alice has started recognizing and writing the letter "A" this week. She is very precocious and very comedic and VERY three. She has fully transitioned out of her naps now. I need to pull her bedtime up by about an hour to try and fight off some of the grumpiness she has during the last half of every day now that she isn't napping. I've been dragging my feet on the early bedtime because it is going to mean that I get her to bed most nights right before or right as Jared is getting home. Essentially, Jared won't be seeing Alice at all during workdays and I will be pulling the heavy end of the Alice load during this difficult toddler season. But without the early bedtime she's just impossible. I've got this.
We had a blessedly slower week. Jack is getting ready to start football season, so we took advantage of one of our last free Saturdays and headed to the Little Sahara sand dunes. Alice has officially given up her nap. This is a net negative for my productivity, but at least we can go on day adventures without having to plan around naps now.
I am blessed to have parents who remember our important dates for us when we forget. Saturday was the anniversary of me and Jared getting engaged (pi day). My parents offered to babysit while we went on a date. We ended up at Olive Garden and actually had such a great time! It's been a while since we've had a good official date. For the past year we've eeked by on our makeshift Wednesday afternoon dates--Jared has a half day on Wednesday so our strategy has been to put Alice down for her nap when he gets home and then order in some lunch or play a game at our house. Now that Alice has given up her nap, this isn't a possibility anymore. We're lucky if we can steal half an hour while Alice takes a quiet time, but it isn't quite the same with her yelling requests down the stairs at us the whole time haha. But all that to say, we really enjoyed our anniversary restaurant date. I was laughing so hard at the message Jared left for Olive Garden on their little table devices before we left: "Our experience was magical. We had the most amazing dining experience of our life. Thanks Olive Garden! I love you."
I'll get right to the pictures, and then post the photos form Jack's baptism that I didn't share last week:
