Switch!

We learned this song in music class in elementary school: "I am slowly going crazy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Switch!" Did you?

So both the crazy part and the switch part fit, in that this was another crazy evening, and I have switched something pretty insignificant but nonetheless mentioned here several times: My shower! Y'all might remember that I ♥ taking cold showers? Well, no longer! I have switched over to taking steaming hot showers. I don't know if it's because the weather changed, and I'll go back in the late Spring, or if it's because I get cold so easily now, but yeah. Hot showers for me!

Anyway, who cares? I only mentioned it because I needed a blog title. Hee.

I slept all day again today. Well, almost, it was after 1 when I woke up. I hadn't meant to do that, but it doesn't really matter, because I had nothing but more cleaning on my plate today. I think I'll do some later this evening... And I only woke up when I did because the Schwan's guy rang the doorbell. I was annoyed and foggy-headed, so I didn't even answer the door. I didn't want anything anyway, and he always tries to talk me into something. Can't stand that.

So, I promised bootie pictures:

I had planned on using clothespins to take a cute picture of the socks hanging from a tree branch, but I dug through all my yarn bins, where I know I put them, and couldn't find them. Okay, so I only pawed through the top three bins, and it's probably in one of the bottom three. So here they are on our front porch. Or stoop. Whatever it is.

So here they are! Aren't they cute? I messed up and made the cuff 5 cm instead of the prescribed 4 cm, but I figure that'll just help them stay up on widdle Baby Luke's legs better. Can you believe he's already a month old?!

Other than the cuff, I made no modifications to the pattern, other than to screw up the toe decreases on the second sock. It's minor, though, and I don't think baby boy - or his mother - will notice. (But if you do, tell me!)

And so they went. Hopefully I'll cast on for the pants before the weekend, knock them out before he grows out of them, and be on to something else. I'm ready for a new project!

While I was taking pictures of the socks, my reward package from the Nielsen Homescan program arrived, and I figured, what the hell? I'll throw pics of those on the ol' blahg, too. This here is a little something I redeemed my Homescan points for baby Luke. I'm calling it his Christmas present, although I'll give it to Steph as soon as I see her next, so he can start playing with it right away.

And this was a little somethin'-somethin' I picked up for Tiger Lily: a chew/pull toy by Coleman. Jack wanted to throw it around for her this afternoon, so I let him give it to her early instead of for Christmas. She seemed to like it. It held her interest, but only as a throw toy. When he stopped, she ignored it. But she's never been huge on toys, at least since she was a puppy. Seems pretty durable, though. If you want to become a Nielsen Homescan panelist, let me know and I'll hook you up with some linkage. They have decent rewards, and the points accrue quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, this afternoon & evening were crazy. Here was the schedule:

3:00 - 4:15 Math tutoring after school for Chloë

4:00 - 5:00 Brownies meeting for Chloë

4:30 - 5:30 Soccer practice, for Chloë!

5:00 - 8:00 Book Fair Family Night at school

6:00 - 8:00 Soccer party for Sophia

7:00 - 9:00 Cub Scout meeting for Jack

Well, we didn't make all of that, obviously. Some thing(s) had to go. At first, the only thing I crossed off was Chloë's soccer practice, since that's twice a week, PLUS a game on Saturdays, and other stuff is less frequent.

And so at 1600, the Littles and I went off to school to pick up Curls from tutoring and take her to Brownies. We didn't get there until 1630, so she missed half the meeting. I can't wait until this soccer bullshit business is over, and we can get back to our regularly scheduled lives! Not that it hasn't been fun. It has. It's just very take-overy, time-wise!

At the meeting, the girls spent time planning their holiday party. They're going to cook for us and entertain us, just like last year, so it should be fun. I let the Littles play outside while I talked to the parents about the soon-to-end Fall Product sale, and then I chit-chatted. I completely and totally forgot that I had two small children playing outside, in the near dark!!! OMG, as soon as I remembered, I raced outside to check on them. They were playing exactly where I told them to, calmly and mostly quietly, and were just fine. But dang, did I give myself a heart attack! Stupid, stupid, me.

One of the moms, who also had weight loss surgery before I did, gave me a bag of her grown-out clothes. I can't wait to try them on! I gave away my clothes to a different, pre-surgery? Brownies mom, so what goes around, comes around, I guess!

From Brownies, we raced over to the school to get in some Book Fair time before the soccer party. My plan was to let each of the kids pick out a special book, and then I was going to choose a book for each of them for Christmas, from their wish lists. And that's what we did. Sophie chose a Barbie book with stickers, Jack chose a Cars book about Mater, and Chloë picked something about Bad Kitty. I forget what it's called, but it's a chapter book. Then I sent them away to look at other stuff while I picked their Christmas gifts. And I got a few 99¢ stocking stuffers at the counter. Chloë saw me picking them out, the little stinker.

While we waited a few minutes for the door prize drawing - which we have won in the past but not this time - the kids harrassed Midnight the Panther, their school mascot. Sophie has historically been afraid of him, but not anymore! She was all over the poor blue beast.

We rushed clear to hell and gone for the soccer party at Chuck E Cheese, arriving only a few minutes late thanks to traffic. The kids played for 20 minutes or so before Coach corralled them to the table to eat their cake and get their trophies and certificates. None of the parents would move out of the freaking way so I could take a decent picture, so here's what you get - the side of Sophie's head and another parent's sleeve.

Yay, Sophie gets a trophy too!! She was so excited about it - much more so than soccer itself - and kept canoodling with it during the party.

The soccer cake - and is that Sophie eating her own cake, or a bite out of the main cake? Gosh, I hope it was the former, but knowing her...!

Soap pausing for a picture with her coach. Isn't he a cutie?

Sophie's soccer trophy, yay!

Our pizza took forever to come (yeah, they had cake first. Not my idea. Silliness), so I launched each of the kids into the play zone with their own cup of tokens. I only gave them five or ten at a time, so they wouldn't go crazy. It's a good thing, because once, I saw Sophie handing hers out to some other, random kids, and another time, I saw a little girl come along and dip into Chloë's cup. Um, no. My tokens!!

Sophie being Sophie

And a typical Chloë pose

Jack had a lot of fun tonight, and he scored the most tickets by far. One time, he came up holding a five foot long stretch of tickets from one token! I couldn't believe it.

This little teammate shares the same name as my kiddo, so they often buddied up together on and off the field.

No clue who this kid was. Jack just totally usurped his ride. He kept doing it to other kids, too. Every time I turned around, there he'd be, on this "ride"with some strange kid!

Jack was pretty pissed when I made them stop and come eat some pizza. "I don't WANT any pizza!" But when I told him he had to eat or I wouldn't give him any more tokens, well, boy howdy, he gobbled that whole piece down pretty quickly!

And then my camera died, so no more pictures. Really, how many do you need from CEC?

Oh, and both Jack and Sophie decided they wanted their next birthdays there (oh, yay), so I guess I'll try and throw them a joint one at the beginning of April or something. Of all the places...

By the time we got out of there, and would have made it to Cub Scouts, there would only have been about a ½-hour left, so we decided to skip it. Plus it was late, and Chloë still had a ton of homework! What the hell, she is eight, not sixteen!

We did Jack's homework, while I baked cookies for tomorrow's lunch snack, and sent the Littles upstairs for a shower before bed. Then Chloë, who had already done her language and spelling homework, sat with me to do her science work. We breezed through that pretty quickly, but only because I stayed right on top of her. Otherwise, she would have fooled around for an extra hour or two. That kid!

And so ends our busy Thursday night. I'm going to go clean up. And then maybe cast on for Luke's trousers. And then...

Slowly going crazy am I, 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1, Switch!

Fin.

P.S. According to Chloë, she only missed three on her math test! yay!

P.P.S. Unbeknownst to me, she also had a science test today. We didn't study for that, but she says she thinks she got those all right. We shall see, Mom can dream, right?