Fast Forward

This girl was so stinking cute this morning! She’s wearing a new-to-her pair of hand-me-down sandals (that she very astutely pointed out to me were rainbows), and a super cute hand-me-down denim skirt, which is almost too cute to even handle.

I don’t know exactly what this little puckered-up-mouth face was about, but I absolutely love it. Grandmommie and I both made it the wallpaper on our phones today, because we both loved it so much!

Excitedly running into school for a few week!

After getting back home from morning drop-off, I got the Crock-Pot Mississippi pot roast going for dinner, and Jeff made us both some of our new cold brew coffee. Which turned out so super good!

(We are still about 80% done with the kitchen cabinet project, but stalled out for these last three weeks. Even still, they look amazing, and it’s so different not to see a wall of wood behind him in this photo!)

For part of my afternoon break, I peeled & chopped some carrots, and threw them into the crock-pot with the roast. I didn’t put them in first thing this morning, because I didn’t want them to get super mushy, but they cooked for about three hours, and were nice and soft, and not too mushy.

Today was a relatively average day of work, so it wasn’t crazy, but it also wasn’t fast. However, we did get the phone call we expected last Friday from the cardiac cath lab, to make more plans for Emmie’s procedures and our stay in Jacksonville. So we now have a few more details, which is helpful, but there’s still a lot to think about. We are also anxious for our phone consultation with the surgeon this coming Thursday, to learn more about the actual surgery & recovery. (If you missed it, or just don’t know the whole story, Emerson has a small hole in her heart, a VSD, that needs open-heart surgery to close the hole, scheduled for the end of August.)

This little bitty girl had a good day, and a nice long nap at school. But she was super stinking excited to see Mommy when I got there to pick her up!

Right at 5pm, I whipped up a loaf of quick bread & threw it in the oven. While that was finishing up, Emerson helped me set up some sugar cookies, and we even had some sprinkles in the cabinet to add as well!

My homemade, buttery, cripsy bread was amazing, plus I made instant mashed potatoes, and this turned out to be a very delicious, super easy meal, that still felt nice and slightly fancy. What did y’all make for dinner tonight?

Little bit ate all of her meat & potatoes, and half of her bread, so she joined Mommy & Daddy in the “clean plate club,” and got to eat one of her cookies for dessert.

We watched just a little bit of Winnie the Pooh on Disney+ while snuggled up, and gave Pretzel some loves.

She needed to do a little bit of work in her kitchen after that, and made me pancakes and even brought me a knife and fork to cut them up. (Oh, and she needed to take her little skirt off at dinner, to get more comfortable to eat a good meal.)

We did our nightly potty stand-off, and it was unsuccessful as usual. We keep this little book about going to church in the bathroom, and read it every time she sits on the potty, just as something to do to keep her sitting for more than two seconds. But she really loves the book too. When we get to this part that says, “Ryan sings very loudly, even when he doesn’t know the words,” I always sing it very dramatically and loudly, and tonight she joined in and did it with me. Then we did it like five more times, just for good measure.

Before reading this Pinkalicious book, I reminded her that it was given to her from Aunt Meggie when she was born as a tiny baby. After we finished it tonight she said, “That was a very cute book Aunt Meggie got me.”

We’ve had this old picture of Grandmommie as a baby up on top of her tall dresser for the last three years, but she rarely saw it since it was so high up. After moving that dresser out the other day, I moved the photo to the little stand next to the glider, and she’s been very interested in talking about it every night at bedtime. She always asks who it is, and when I tell her it’s Grandmommie from whens he was a baby, she always says something like, “Why she was a baby?”

Emmie was very sweet and lovey and cuddly at bedtime, and she went down easily for me. Afterwards, I went straight back to the kitchen, because this place was an absolute mess! It took me about 30 minutes, but it looks soooo much better now.

And although I don’t actually want to wish my life away by fast-forwarding to 2021, with the pandemic, the quarantine, the Saharan dust storm, something else it seems like I’m forgetting, and now Emerson’s upcoming open-heart surgery, 2020 has been a doozy. And I think I for one, could use a fresh start.

(Also, I can’t decide if “fast forward” is supposed to be hyphenated or not, and for this Type 1, spelling & grammar enforcer, it’s driving me nuts. We’ll go with no hyphen, but don’t tell me if I’m wrong 😉 )