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"Ikea like a key--awesome!"
Mar. 21st, 2011 04:59 pmIt's crazy how a little bit of spring weather really gives you that urge to get excited about life again. I start feeling organizey in January, but when the temperatures rise above sixty, I am all "hey, let's hang up curtains!" and "let's buy furniture!" and "let's not live in a pigsty anymore!" M and I were super busy with all sorts of productivity on Saturday, and I am continuing into the new week with all the usual household chorse, all of which are terribly behind schedule. Seems like there's never enough time or energy to do everything I wish that I did, though.
Also, chronic foot pain tends to curb your enthusiasm for getting off your rump. I am back on the meds and today my feet feel better than they have in a while, though. I made it back to the gym one day last week. I mean, progress! I don't like going places on Monday but I hope to be back in there tomorrow. Umm.. did I mention that I am not doing the low-carb thing anymore? I made the decision to go off of it, as opposed to just cheating here and there until I had moved on from it, so I feel decent about that. I figured that after seven weeks of basically no progress at all, I might as well accept that that plan was not working out for me. So the good news is that i can eat potatoes again! The bad news is that I am no closer to Twiggy than I was before I put myself through two months of angst and sacrifice. Ahh, well. Too bad that I didn't want to be Twiggy, I wanted to be pregnant. NOT THAT I'M BITTER.
Or wait, maybe I am.
Anyway, moving right along. We jaunted up to Ikea yesterday, which is a two hour drive from here. Evelyn begs for us to take her. It's really cute and honestly, if she was begging for us to take her anywhere else that far away, we'd probably be a much harder sell. But a miniature half-Swede begging to go to Ikea? More than she begs to go to the zoo or the aquarium or the children's museum or the park? I mean, come on. How can you resist that? We went at the beginning of January and she's been begging ever since to go back and we put her off this long. I don't think we waited long enough because what she really loves is walking through all of the little rooms and sitting in the chairs and peeking into the bathrooms and opening closets. I love this because she gets this from her mother, I think. I love walking through or peeking into the windows of houses. I mean, I peek from the acceptable distance of the road as we drive by. I do not sneak up to windows in the dark, trying to catch a peek of my neighbors undressing or something. We ate first, as we always do, and then started looking at the rooms and she was immediately pulling on us, whining to go to the kid rooms and the toy area. I made her eat a squished and most likely expired rice krispie treat from the bottom of her bag*, drink some milk and listen to a lecture about how the point of the day was to enjoy herself, since she had been begging to go for months and do you think we will listen to you next time if you act this way? This actually worked, and her mood improved and we enjoyed the rest of the day immensely.
Our Ikea--well, it's ours if we can claim it from such a distance--is really close to Jungle Jim's, which is.. an experience. It's an international grocery store, among other things, so we used to make the trek up there just for that, before Ikea opened two years ago. Now, of course, we don't buy much Swedish food stuff there because what M would buy, Ikea has for less. (Kalles caviar, mustard, Bilar, that's mostly it. He buys a few random things upon occasion, but those are staples. At JJ's they used to carry a nasty fish paste and Julmust, but they don't have either of those anymore, at either place.) Anyway, the good luck fairy visited my house in the last month or two and instilled in my child a love for tasting new fruits and vegetables. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I am over the moon happy about it. JJ's also has much better produce than is available in my town, where apparently people do not eat fresh produce. I believe I have ranted about this on multiple occasions in the past. Plus, they have talking vegetables and giant art installations and nooks and cubbyholes and aisles and aisles of things in langugages other than English, like green bean popsicles. It's something like four or seven acres of food. If you're ever near, you should go. E was also very impressed with it last time and that was part of her Ikea request, that we go there (which of course we wanted to do anyway, as long as we were there.) We came home with tiny red bananas, a starfruit--which has been at The Top of Evie's list of things she wanted to try, some of her newly beloved kale, plus a handful of things that aren't that oddball, but that she got to pick out. Lemons, for fresh lemonade, and snow peas. Confession--I was buying the peas anyway for a recipe, and so I encouraged her to request them just so it would make her more likely to enjoy them. Parenting is mainly about manipulation, really. M finds JJ's to be a mecca for unusual and fabulous beer, so that's what he filled the cart with. Me? I just go for the gorgeous gorgeous potatoes. Seriously, what else?
Way more than I meant to say about our trip, but we had a good day. A great weekend. I just wished that it could last for an extra day. Just ONE more day. M has two weeks of vacation to play with this year, and we have two potential visitors coming from Sweden, but we haven't yet heard if either one of them will actually be here. Except for that, I think I'd have troed to nag him into calling in sick. :) I am constantly trying to nag him into staying homr. Sometimes annoying to be married to someone with an impeccable work ethic. Mostly I am grateful for that, of course. Not everyone is so lucky. :)
Evie just gave me a heart attack. She straddled the arm of the (revolving) chair and the leg of the couch and then started leaning forward. I was sure she was going to fall on her head and break her neck before I could get there or she sat up. She got up on her own. That would be the perfect segue into something else I want to write about--confidence and gymnastics and the difference in boys and girls--but that will have to wait because this has gotten too long and did you notice I was talking about how I am getting so much done today? That pretty much stopped when I started writing this novella and I need to get back to filling up Evie's new desk--what, you didn't think that we came home from Ikea empty-handed, did you?
*I'm one of those moms who always wants to have an extra set of clothes available, but by the time your kid is (almost) four, it does feel a bit stupid to carry a diaper bag. ;) This is just a bag full of Stuff that I always try to leave in the car, but I make an exception at Ikea. Don't ask me about the time that we left it at the car for it was bad and it involved public urination and let me just say that I also carry a plastic bag with flip flops in them as a result of that day. Running out to the car for something when you are basically stuck in the middle of a maze the size of Nebraska, or waiting in the bathroom with a half-naked, wet and crying child for that other someone to return? Both options were so glamorous but I bet you know which part I got stuck with, don't you? And gee, you didn't have to ask after all, aren't you so lucky? :)
Also, chronic foot pain tends to curb your enthusiasm for getting off your rump. I am back on the meds and today my feet feel better than they have in a while, though. I made it back to the gym one day last week. I mean, progress! I don't like going places on Monday but I hope to be back in there tomorrow. Umm.. did I mention that I am not doing the low-carb thing anymore? I made the decision to go off of it, as opposed to just cheating here and there until I had moved on from it, so I feel decent about that. I figured that after seven weeks of basically no progress at all, I might as well accept that that plan was not working out for me. So the good news is that i can eat potatoes again! The bad news is that I am no closer to Twiggy than I was before I put myself through two months of angst and sacrifice. Ahh, well. Too bad that I didn't want to be Twiggy, I wanted to be pregnant. NOT THAT I'M BITTER.
Or wait, maybe I am.
Anyway, moving right along. We jaunted up to Ikea yesterday, which is a two hour drive from here. Evelyn begs for us to take her. It's really cute and honestly, if she was begging for us to take her anywhere else that far away, we'd probably be a much harder sell. But a miniature half-Swede begging to go to Ikea? More than she begs to go to the zoo or the aquarium or the children's museum or the park? I mean, come on. How can you resist that? We went at the beginning of January and she's been begging ever since to go back and we put her off this long. I don't think we waited long enough because what she really loves is walking through all of the little rooms and sitting in the chairs and peeking into the bathrooms and opening closets. I love this because she gets this from her mother, I think. I love walking through or peeking into the windows of houses. I mean, I peek from the acceptable distance of the road as we drive by. I do not sneak up to windows in the dark, trying to catch a peek of my neighbors undressing or something. We ate first, as we always do, and then started looking at the rooms and she was immediately pulling on us, whining to go to the kid rooms and the toy area. I made her eat a squished and most likely expired rice krispie treat from the bottom of her bag*, drink some milk and listen to a lecture about how the point of the day was to enjoy herself, since she had been begging to go for months and do you think we will listen to you next time if you act this way? This actually worked, and her mood improved and we enjoyed the rest of the day immensely.
Our Ikea--well, it's ours if we can claim it from such a distance--is really close to Jungle Jim's, which is.. an experience. It's an international grocery store, among other things, so we used to make the trek up there just for that, before Ikea opened two years ago. Now, of course, we don't buy much Swedish food stuff there because what M would buy, Ikea has for less. (Kalles caviar, mustard, Bilar, that's mostly it. He buys a few random things upon occasion, but those are staples. At JJ's they used to carry a nasty fish paste and Julmust, but they don't have either of those anymore, at either place.) Anyway, the good luck fairy visited my house in the last month or two and instilled in my child a love for tasting new fruits and vegetables. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I am over the moon happy about it. JJ's also has much better produce than is available in my town, where apparently people do not eat fresh produce. I believe I have ranted about this on multiple occasions in the past. Plus, they have talking vegetables and giant art installations and nooks and cubbyholes and aisles and aisles of things in langugages other than English, like green bean popsicles. It's something like four or seven acres of food. If you're ever near, you should go. E was also very impressed with it last time and that was part of her Ikea request, that we go there (which of course we wanted to do anyway, as long as we were there.) We came home with tiny red bananas, a starfruit--which has been at The Top of Evie's list of things she wanted to try, some of her newly beloved kale, plus a handful of things that aren't that oddball, but that she got to pick out. Lemons, for fresh lemonade, and snow peas. Confession--I was buying the peas anyway for a recipe, and so I encouraged her to request them just so it would make her more likely to enjoy them. Parenting is mainly about manipulation, really. M finds JJ's to be a mecca for unusual and fabulous beer, so that's what he filled the cart with. Me? I just go for the gorgeous gorgeous potatoes. Seriously, what else?
Way more than I meant to say about our trip, but we had a good day. A great weekend. I just wished that it could last for an extra day. Just ONE more day. M has two weeks of vacation to play with this year, and we have two potential visitors coming from Sweden, but we haven't yet heard if either one of them will actually be here. Except for that, I think I'd have troed to nag him into calling in sick. :) I am constantly trying to nag him into staying homr. Sometimes annoying to be married to someone with an impeccable work ethic. Mostly I am grateful for that, of course. Not everyone is so lucky. :)
Evie just gave me a heart attack. She straddled the arm of the (revolving) chair and the leg of the couch and then started leaning forward. I was sure she was going to fall on her head and break her neck before I could get there or she sat up. She got up on her own. That would be the perfect segue into something else I want to write about--confidence and gymnastics and the difference in boys and girls--but that will have to wait because this has gotten too long and did you notice I was talking about how I am getting so much done today? That pretty much stopped when I started writing this novella and I need to get back to filling up Evie's new desk--what, you didn't think that we came home from Ikea empty-handed, did you?
*I'm one of those moms who always wants to have an extra set of clothes available, but by the time your kid is (almost) four, it does feel a bit stupid to carry a diaper bag. ;) This is just a bag full of Stuff that I always try to leave in the car, but I make an exception at Ikea. Don't ask me about the time that we left it at the car for it was bad and it involved public urination and let me just say that I also carry a plastic bag with flip flops in them as a result of that day. Running out to the car for something when you are basically stuck in the middle of a maze the size of Nebraska, or waiting in the bathroom with a half-naked, wet and crying child for that other someone to return? Both options were so glamorous but I bet you know which part I got stuck with, don't you? And gee, you didn't have to ask after all, aren't you so lucky? :)
