Frustrating Night

Before work this morning, I got busy on our dinner for tonight. I was craving a crockpot pot roast, after smelling it in my friend Heather’s office one day last week (when she brought her leftovers for lunch), and decided I needed to make one this week. I had the potatoes from my friend Amanda’s backyard garden, and Heather gave me those onions from her dad’s backyard garden, and even though I didn’t have the Ranch seasoning packet, I added some of the herbs & spices to mimic those flavors. And so by 7am, I was already looking forward to coming home at the end of the day, with my house smelling amazing. And looking forward to eating that delicious meal!

We got to school just a few minutes after Meg & the triplets today, so we saw Ellie and Meg in the hallway (she’s in a different class than the other two), then went by the classroom to visit Kensley & Riley. And they each gave me about 10 hugs. And then after I dropped off Emerson in her room across the hall, Kensley was standing there holding her door open, asking me for one more kiss! It was all very sweet. (And yes, Emerson had to pick up each of the trippies.)

Jeff made a little reflecting panel and moved the terrarium over by the back door today, to make sure it was getting enough light. He did this all on his own, and I thought it was pretty cute 🙂

During my lunch break that last few days, I’ve been poring over the Summer Reading Guide from Modern Mrs. Darcy. This is the 11th year she’s put out this guide, and I’ve been following along for about half of that. I didn’t really do it last year though (with an infant to take care of at the same time this was put out), but I was so excited to see this years’ guide come out the other day! Out of the 42 books on the guide (which she breaks down into six different genres with her own summary for each book), I’ve actually already read five or six, and then there are 24 others that I want to read, although about seven or eight of them were already on my TBR (“to be read”) list.

But since I don’t actually purchase books (my salary could never keep up with the amount of books I read in a year), I cross-checked her guide with my local library’s offerings (Kindle or audio only, really), and added the ones they had. (And I also made a list of ones I want to “recommend” for my library to purchase, but I’ve already reached my limit on that for now, and have to wait 12 more days before I can recommend any more.) I have actually already started on my first book from the guide, “So Many Beginnings,” which is a “remixed” Little Women, about the four Black sisters starting over in 1863 North Carolina after they & their parents are freed from slavery.

Got a few pics of both girls from their teachers today…

The summer theme at Growing Room is going to be something about the farm, so all of the teachers have been decorating this past week. Addie’s teachers put all their pictures on cute chickens on their door!

When we got home, everything was supposed to be ready… but when I went to check the food, Jeff then told me that he had turned the crockpot OFF around 7:30 to make a bagel (they’re plugged into the same outlet & he thought it would be too much, even though I know 100% that’s not the case…), and forgot to turn it back on until after noon sometime. So it wasn’t done! I was hopping mad. I left it in the crockpot though to keep slow-cooking, in hopes we can eat it tomorrow or Friday instead. I took a few minutes in my room by myself, then came back to the kitchen.

I thought about just keeping it simple with PB&J, but couldn’t do that because our jar of JIF was part of the salmonella recall. So I made tuna sandwiches for all of us instead. But a few bites in, I found TWO BONES, in my mouth! I’ve never had that happen with canned tuna before (and it was name brand, not even the cheap stuff!), but I definitely didn’t want to eat anymore after that, and no one else did either. So we ended up just heating up the last bit of breakfast casserole from Sunday, and some of those frozen soft pretzels, and that was our dinner. It was all so very frustrating. It was just not a good night for dinner in our house!

Emmie was ripping off tiny bites of her pretzel to share with Addie sitting at the coffee table together.

And then Addie grabbed Emerson’s water bottle to steal some of her ice water. She actually just learned how to drink from a straw a few days ago, but she has gotten the hang of it pretty quickly.

We played a little, and watched a little Spidey & Friends, then we started getting the girls ready for bed. And then Emerson picked up her terrarium and wanted to see it’s little lights reflected on the floor, and got everything all messed up and mixed up, which caused a whole new frustration for us. But we talked through it with her, and got her calmed down, and talked about how tomorrow is a new day and even though we’re frustrated and tonight was a rough night, we can go to sleep and wake up fresh and happy tomorrow. And Jeff and I are going to try to painstakingly scrape it back together, as best as we can.

Now it’s 9:15, and Addison is still wide awake, fighting sleep. She was almost asleep after her bottle earlier, but then she popped her eyes open out of nowhere, and now refuses to settle down, seeming to be frustrated herself now. Jeff has been letting her walk all over the living room some more, trying to get her even more exhausted, so that we can hopefully get her down to sleep soon finally too.

And yes, tomorrow we wake up to a fresh new day. And tomorrow Emmie graduates from VPK!